New Delhi|Ekta
Doctors of Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have performed unique surgery of taking out a whistle stuck in the windpipe of a four-year-old child through bronchoscopy. Dr Prabudh Goel, Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatric Surgery, said, “Shaheen, a resident of Nuh district of Haryana, was brought to the mother and child block of the hospital on Sunday morning.
4 year old kid swallowed whistle reached AIIMS: Dr Goel said that the child’s father had bought a pair of slippers for him, which had a whistle attached to it. He told that the whistle got removed from the slipper and Shaheen put it in his mouth and it got stuck in his right bronchus. Dr Goel said, “The child was coughing when he was brought to the emergency ward. He was also having trouble breathing because the whistle was stuck in his windpipe. Whistling sound was also coming from the child’s mouth while breathing.
Time is Money for such surgery:
“The child was taken directly from the emergency ward to the operation theatre, where we performed bronchoscopy. Bronchoscopy is a challenge between life and death. Apart from this, there is a risk of damage to the brain so, in such surgery “Time is money”
”AIIMS Director Dr. M. Srinivas was also present during the surgery and part of the 11 members team who performed the surgery to save the little one.
After a four-year-old boy inadvertently swallowed a 1.8-cm-long whistle installed in his shoe, that got stuck in his right bronchus, leaving him unable to breathe and creating abnormal sounds while breathing, AIIMS Delhi conducted a minimally invasive bronchoscopic surgery on him.
He was coughing badly and had difficulty in breathing, while he was coughing, he was also producing whistling sounds which emerged from the whistle stuck in his lungs,” said Dr Goel, assistant professor in the Paediatric Surgery department.
Challenges in removing 1.5 cm whistle : Dr Goel added that it was an emergency case, and the child was shifted to the operation theatre and a bronchoscopy conducted, which requires a four-way mechanism that can sometimes turn fatal in such young kids as four pipes are put inside the mouth of the child.
“The airpipe of children is smaller than our little finger. For such surgeries, we put a pipe with light to make the area visible and insert a camera to see what needs to be operated on. The third mechanism involves establishing air passage for the child to breathe enough during the surgery, and then an instrument is put inside to out the foreign element stuck in the lungs,” Dr Goel explained.
AIIMS receives 100 such cases yearly:
Dr.Meenu Bajpai, Head of Department, Pediatric Surgery AIIMS, said every year our hospital witnessed 100 such cases where parents report that their children swallowed some foreign objects. Dr.said consequences of such incidents could be harmful and lead to brain damage, loss of life and need timely surgery.
Dr.Bajpai further added, some small food items and fancy toys carrying whistle or any other such items like peanuts, necklace beads, dry batteries, should be kept out of reach of small kids. These incidents or habits of swallowing small items mostly seen in children aged below 5 years. We urged all parents be careful so that little ones can be saved from such incidents he added.
