A team of doctors at SSKM medical college saved an eight-month-old toddler after extracting a small plastic cover of a kohl box stuck in between the respiratory and esophageal tracts, today.
The condition of the baby is stable, said doctors. Ritesh Bagdi was rushed to the Institute of Otorhinolaryngology and Head & Neck Surgery Centre of Excellence at the hospital around 9.30 am today in gasping condition with severe declining oxygen saturation levels after he swallowed the cover while playing with the foreign body at his New Town residence.
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He was rushed to the state-run Bidhannagar Sub-Divisional Hospital and later to NRS Medical College Hospital, a premier medical teaching institute in the state. But, both the hospitals denied admissions because of inadequate infrastructure facilities, mainly bronchoscopy devices required for a procedure to remove a foreign body stuck inside the respiratory tract causing severe breathing trouble.
“Without any delay we performed a laryngoscopy procedure and extracted the plastic cover from the baby’s respiratory tract within a few minutes. He is stable and kept in the intensive care unit for round-the-clock observations. He was gasping with abnormally low oxygen saturation level, 50, when he was brought to our institute today,” said professor Dr Arunava Sengupta, chief ENT surgeon and director of the Institute of Otorhinolaryngology and Head & Neck Surgery Centre of Excellence.
The institute has so far enabled 88 children to hear and speak through cochlear implant surgeries since the surgical procedure started under the national programme for hearing impaired. “It’s a great achievement for the state-run SSKM hospital as well as our team of doctors in the institute to enable so many children to hear and speak,” Dr Sengupta said.
