Doctors remove piece of necklace from lungs of one-year-old child in Kerala's Kochi
Jun 07, 2022
Kochi (Kerala) [India], June 7 : A piece of necklace stuck in the left lung of a one-year-old child was successfully removed by a team of doctors at a private hospital in Kochi on Tuesday.
The natives of Pattimattom, Perumbavoor, Binshad and Fathima noticed a severe cough in their one-year-old boy child. They immediately took him to a nearby hospital, where they took an X-ray of the lungs. The X-ray revealed the presence of a foreign body in the child's lungs. They referred him to another private hospital in Kochi. However, due to the complexity, they referred him further to another hospital from where he reached Amrita Hospitals.
A team of doctors headed by Dr Tinku Joseph, Chief Interventional Pulmonologist, successfully removed an impacted necklace bead from the upper lobe of the left lung by rigid bronchoscopy procedure.
The child was treated for recurrent chest infection for three weeks and a chest X-ray done at a local hospital showed the presence of a suspicious foreign body within the left lung. Later, for further management, the child was referred to Amrita Hospitals, Kochi.
Dr Tinku Joseph said, "The impacted foreign body was the cause of recurrent chest infection which the child suffered from, and such rare instances should be suspected in both paediatric and adult age groups who suffer from recurrent non-resolving pneumonia." The procedure lasted for nearly 30 minutes and the child was discharged from the hospital within 24 hours after the procedure. He added, "Foreign body removal was a difficult task."
In this case, it was impacted within one of the most difficult sites to retrieve a foreign body, the left upper lobe. Also, it was made of plastic and glass of a round shape. Removal of such types of foreign bodies is difficult due to its anatomical location and lack of efficient tools to remove the aspirated object."
It is believed that the child would have accidentally aspirated it while playing. However, the child's parents were unaware of how it exactly happened. Recently, the department of Interventional Pulmonology, Amrita Hospitals has successfully completed 1,000 rigid bronchoscopic procedures. Rigid bronchoscopy is a procedure used to diagnose and treat various complicated airway disorders.
