News Desk, News Nation 360 : 21-year-old Sufiyan Ali of Jamshedpur suffered from a chronic cough for the past two years which, at times, had turned out to be hemorrhagic. He had met various ENT specialists and had received medicines but the problem came back every few months. So when the condition worsened in the last month, he was referred to Manipal Hospital, Broadway. The peculiar thing that was discovered during the treatment by Dr Aparna Chatterjee, Associate Consultant, Respiratory Medicine, is told next. Unconscious and overlooked, a razor-sharp, metallic spring became lodged in his airway, which caused recurrent infection and bleeding. Such was the foreign body, not noticed till expert medical interventional techniques were utilized while lodged in the left subcarinal area. Dr Aparna Chatterjee, Associate Consultant, Respiratory Medicine, Manipal Hospital, Broadway, who led the procedure, remarked that this was not a typical situation. Although foreign bodies usually move to the lower lobes of the lung, this object was embedded tangentially in a very rare location, making the regular removal approaches extremely dangerous. To properly loosen and remove it, it took several tries using rat-tooth forceps and exact angulation. After several meticulous attempts, they were able to successfully remove and retrieve the metal object. The patient's safety was always guaranteed as minimal bleeding was cautiously controlled. Initially, Sufiyan Ali was suspected to have TB because of his persistent cough and other symptoms. A plan for Bronchoscopy with Endobronchial Ultrasound (EBUS) was made to investigate this further. EBUS is a technique that uses sound waves to create a detailed image of the lungs and surrounding areas. However, an initial X-ray was not conclusive, and a High-Resolution CT (HRCT) Thorax scan revealed a shocking find: a 2 cm long metallic spring lodged in his airway. The patient and his family had no recollection of any incident that could explain the foreign object's presence, and it was up to the medical team to unravel the mystery and devise a complex extraction procedure.
Pic - Courtesy
