NEW DELHI: A six-year-old underweight child, who was not able to swallow food for almost three years due to obstruction at the junction of the food pipe and stomach, received a new lease of life after undergoing a novel endoscopic procedure at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, authorities said on Friday.
Doctors claimed that the girl was the “youngest patient in India” to undergo this procedure — POEM (per oral endoscopic myotomy). POEM is an endoscopic procedure used to treat obstruction at the lower end of the food pipe due to failure of relaxation of lower esophageal sphincter (musculature opening) due to motility disorder called achalasia cardia.
It is a relatively new advanced endoscopic procedure which can be performed in the endoscopic suite itself without any incision on chest or abdomen, with a minimal post-procedure stay, the hospital said.
Recently, the department of gastroenterology received a young patient who was “not able to swallow food, for almost three years,” it said.
She had repeated bouts of vomiting and regurgitation of food from the mouth and nose which had resulted in her marked weight loss, doctors said. Dr Anil Arora, chairman and head of the department of gastroenterology, said, “When she came to us, she was very thin, emaciated and marasmic (protein malnutrition) and weighed 8-10 kg lower than the normal weight of her corresponding peers.
“We diagnosed her to be suffering from achalasia cardia (swallowing disorder) after evaluating her with endoscopy, barium swallow followed by high-resolution esophageal manometry”. Till recently the treatment of achalasia cardia in children was surgical intervention, but in her case, it was decided to perform a relatively new endoscopic procedure, called POEM, he said.