CHENNAI: As 10-month-old Sri Divya sleeps peacefully in the ward at the Government Children’s Hospital, her young mother Kokila sits in relief. Her baby is recuperating after a minimally invasive cystoscopy procedure, which was carried out for the first time to remove a safety pin the baby had swallowed by mistake.
The family that hails from Tiruvallur district, rushed to the local government hospital after the baby showed symptoms of pain and the mother sensed that she had swallowed something. Kokila was feeding the baby when the power went off, and Divya swallowed a safety pin that was dangling from the mother’s chain. The incident had taken place on Saturday, and the family brought the baby to Chennai around midnight.
“I knew the baby had swallowed something and I checked by putting my hand down the throat. But I never thought it would be a pin,” said Kokila. Since the parents brought the baby on time, not much damage was done. While removal of such foreign bodies is usually a more complex procedure where the stomach would have to be opened, this time, the team of doctors used a cystoscope to perform the procedure. The instrument is usually used to look into the urinary bladder. This procedure has never been used for such a complaint, and the doctors said that it was quicker and with minimum damage.
With just a 5 mm cut, the cystoscope was inserted into the stomach and saline was sprayed so that the food pipe, where the pin was stuck, could be dilated. Using a hook on the cystoscope, it was pulled out, and the entire procedure lasted around 45 minutes. The opening was sealed with a few stitches.
“The baby’s food pipe is very small. Hence, it is difficult to pull a foreign body out, and if we had tried to push it down, it could have scraped the wall and caused bleeding,” explained Dr Muthukumaran, the surgeon who was part of the team that performed the surgery.
The team of doctors was headed by Dr SV Senthilnathan with Dr A Anirudhan, Dr N Krishnan and Dr J Guruprasad.
“We urge parents to be more careful with safety pins. This procedure is simpler and we appeal to parents not to get involved in complicated surgeries, if such an incident occurs. They can come to us,” said Dr Muthukumaran. The baby is recovering well and will be discharged in a few days. The surgery was done free of cost under the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme.