BENGALURU: A team of doctors at Fortis hospital performed a complex surgery to treat a 10-month-old boy from Assam, suffering from a rare congenital defect known as ‘Laryngeal cleft condition’ where food ingested through the mouth goes into the windpipe, instead of the food pipe. He also suffered from repeated pneumonia, low weight and malnourishment.
This condition is rare and present in 1 in 10,000 or 20,000 live births, with higher occurrence in males, and accounts for 0.3% to 0.5% of all congenital anomalies of the larynx. The child was unable to consume anything orally and was managed through nasogastric or orogastric tube (NGT) feeding for months, where a tube is inserted through the nose or mouth, past the throat, and into the stomach.
“As food was going into the windpipe, he would choke and cough continuously. There is a curtain in the upper part of the voice box, at the back of the throat, that creates a partition between the windpipe and food pipe. Due to the cleft, he would swallow food into the windpipe,” said Dr Nischal R Pandya, consultant, Paediatric Cardiovascular Thoracic Surgery. He was diagnosed at the age of two months in his hometown.
Doctors in Bengaluru carried out a two-hour surgery. “We did an endoscopic laryngeal cleft repair, for Type 1 laryngeal cleft. ENT surgeons helped set up the field to view the voice box area. As the child was small, the risk of infection, bleeding and injury to other structures in the throat were high,” Dr Pandya added. Post surgery, the baby was kept under observation for 12 days.