Bengaluru: Three-year-old boy swallows Ganesha idol, survives

BENGALURU: A three-year-old boy who accidentally swallowed a 4cm-long Ganesha idol on Friday morning survived, thanks to his family availing immediate medical help. After undergoing a procedure for removing it, the boy was discharged from hospital around 4pm and is doing fine.
The boy was brought to the paediatric emergency services of Manipal Hospitals, Old Airport Road, around 8.39am. He was struggling to swallow saliva. The child's parents had seen him accidentally swallow the Ganesha idol when he was playing with it. When doctors further examined the boy, they found the idol stuck in the upper part of the food pipe.
The boy was suffering from acute pain in the throat. The idol was removed from his food pipe around 9.30am through an endoscopic procedure under general anaesthesia. He was kept under observation for three hours post the procedure and discharged in the evening.
Dr Srikanth KP, paediatric gastroenterologist, Manipal Hospitals, said the boy experienced pain in the upper chest and had difficulty in swallowing. Initially, a chest and neck x-ray was done, which confirmed the location and type of foreign body, and then they planned to remove it using a flexible endoscopic approach. The doctor confirmed that it was a metal object.
The child was taken to the endoscopy suite and within one hour, the foreign body was safely removed. During the procedure, the idol was pushed from the food pipe to the stomach and removed there.
"Directly removing the idol from where it was stuck would have caused injury to the food pipe. In such cases, we try to avoid sharper objects in the food pipe. The throat is a very complex structure with a food pipe, windpipe and blood vessels. Hence, we pushed the object down to the stomach, reversed its position and pulled it out through endoscopy," Dr Srikanth explained.
Subsequently, the boy was closely observed and put on feeds after four hours. He reacted to it well, without complications.
If the boy had not received immediate medical attention, it would have caused injury to the esophagus. It could have led to perforation of the esophagus, including infection in the chest, the doctor said. "Moreover, the fact that the child was not able to swallow anything itself would have caused many problems," said Dr Srikanth. If the foreign object swallowed would have been big and abnormal in size, it'd have required a surgery. Doctors who treated the boy cautioned against keeping tiny objects within the reach of children at home.