KOCHI: Doctors at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences have yet again performed a life-saving surgery in a patient with critical airway narrowing and fistula between the airway and the food pipe.
Dr Arun Nair, Head of Department and Chief of Interventional Pulmonology who has joined AIMS Kochi after having trained in the UK & Germany and worked as a consultant in the UK performed the life-saving surgery with his team. The patient was referred to AIMS with severe difficulty in breathing that had been getting worse since a month and was finding it difficult to breathe/speak even a few words.
He had a CT scan which showed his main wind pipe (trachea) narrowed to 4 mm and the airway in to the left lung was nearly fully blocked due to a mass in the chest. He underwent a bronchoscopy that confirmed critical airway narrowing and also a communication between the food pipe and the wind pipe (tracheo-oesophageal fistula with a new technique endoscopic bronchial ultrasound guided sampling (EBUS-TBNA).
He underwent emergency dilatation of the airway followed by confirmation of the diagnosis A silicone stent was inserted to keep his airway open as a life saving measure and allowed him to be removed from ventilator support.
Patient is now able to eat and breath on his own and will shortly be receiving treatment for the mass in the chest.
Dr. Arun Nair said only a few centres in the country have the ability to do such work and that the AIMS Interventional Pulmonology department has comprehensive facilities that allow such life saving procedures to be performed safely by internationally trained personnel.