ENT doctors at SSKM Hospital, eastern India’s premier government super specialist institute for post graduate medical education and research, on Monday gave a new lease of life to a six-year-old male child at a time when two other state-run teaching hospitals, Malda Medical College Hospital (MMCH) and NRS Medical College Hospital allegedly could not give him proper medical treatments since April.
The trouble started for Md Hamim Ansari of Kaliachak in Malda district when he swallowed a foreign body, made of plastic, while playing with it in April. He was rushed to the MMCH where the doctors attending him diagnosed that he had accumulated fluid in his lungs causing a severe cough.
But the doctors could not drain out the fluid. He was then taken to another premier teaching hospital NRS Medical College Hospital in the city where he had undergone treatment for about two weeks since 26 April.
Family members of the boy alleged that diagnostic bronchoscopy performed on him, jointly by NRS Hospital’s CTVS and chest units, spotted the plastic in his lungs but the concerned doctors could not bring it out owing to illequipped infrastructure at the ENT unit.
The family members, along with the boy, went back to Kaliachak finding no other way out but then took their son to SSKM Hospital when his condition deteriorated. The SSKM ENT team comprising Dr Arunava Sengupta, head of ENT department, Dr Debashish Ghosh, Dr Mainak Mitra and Dr Swagato Roy on Monday performed an emergency bronchoscopy, considering the patient’s critical condition and extracted the foreign body successfully within 45 minutes’ operation.
“The patient is doing well and has been shifted to a general bed. He will be discharged after observing his condition for a few more days. It was a very difficult surgery,” said Dr Sengupta.