Mumbai: After moving from one hospital to another for eight days, a one-year-old baby, who was critical after ingesting a two-mm earring, has been cured at Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital.
Khushi Soni, who turned one on Thursday, had ingested an earring which was lodged in her airway. Her father Sandeep Soni consulted doctors at various hospitals.
“Initially, Khushi had cold and fever, but doctors at the local public hospital suggested we take her to a bigger hospital. We then admitted her to KB Bhabha Hospital in Kurla, where she was detected with pneumonia, and treated with multiple rounds of steam inhalation, but without any improvement.”
Doctors at Bhabha hospital had also advised that Khushi be put on a ventilator. But her parents transferred her to Sion hospital, where a chest X-ray was performed, but it did not find anything.
The parents then took her to Sheetal Nursing Home in Kurla to put Khushi on a ventilator. She was there for three days when a full body X-ray was performed, revealing the presence of a foreign object in her trachea.
“It was very difficult to watch doctors perform tests on my child without results,” Khushi’s mother Chandni Soni said.
At 5.30 p.m. on Wednesday, Khushi was admitted to Wadia hospital. “Sheetal hospital’s X-ray showed a foreign body, but doctors could not identify it, after which her parents brought her to us. We immediately performed a bronchoscopy and removed the earring without having to operate on the child. The procedure took around 10-12 minutes,” Dr. Bal Gopal Kurup from Wadia Hospital said.
About the diagnosis of pneumonia at Bhabha hospital, Dr. Divya Prabhat, head of ear, nose and throat department, Wadia hospital, said, “It is a common error for doctors to first diagnose cold and later pneumonia. However, given the habits of babies and toddlers, foreign body ingestion is extremely common; it needs to be checked for. We have dealt with over a thousand such cases in the last couple of decades.”
