CHENNAI: Doctors at Sri Ramachandra Hospital in Porur saved the life of a five-year-old boy by removing an LED bulb from his lungs through bronchoscopy. The boy was playing with the 5-cm-long and 2-cm-wide bulb when he accidentally swallowed it. Instead of passing through to his intestine, the bulb entered his lungs, said Dr R Madhu, Head of Department, Paediatric Surgery at Sri Ramachandra Hospital.
The doctor said that foreign objects entering the lungs are common, but in his experience of around 30 years as a surgeon, this was the first time he saw a person swallowing an LED bulb. “It was a very challenging case, because we were cautious not to catch on the glass side of the object. If we break the bulb, then the glass pieces would spill into the lungs. So, we had to rotate it carefully and hold the metal side of the bulb to remove it,” said Dr Madhu.
According to the press release, the boy was taken to a hospital with a cough and breathing difficulty last Friday. The boy was taken to another hospital and following two failed attempts to remove the bulb, the doctors recommended an open chest surgery. The parents were not convinced with the idea of a major surgery, so they brought the child to Sri Ramachandra Hospital.
Dr Madhu and his team took a CT scan of the child and found an LED bulb deposited in the breathing tube branch, segmental bronchus. With support from anaesthesia paediatric surgeons headed by Dr Aruna Parameswari, the doctors removed the LED bulb safely through bronchoscopy. The child was subsequently discharged.