Doctors at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital recently operated on a 66-year-old Iraqi woman and removed 53 stones from her salivary duct and gland.
Varun Rai, the hospital’s ENT consultant, said the biggest challenge was to remove the stones without causing any injury to the gland or the 3 mm-wide duct.
The stones were painstakingly removed one by one using forceps in a procedure that lasted two hours. “After extensive review of worldwide literature, a single parotid gland having more than 25 stones within the parotid duct has not been previously reported,” said Dr. Rai.
The patient, who is from Baghdad, was suffering from recurrent attacks of pain and swelling of the right parotid gland whenever she ate something. “After consultation she was diagnosed as having multiple stones in her right parotid duct... the largest stone was 8mm stuck midway in the duct,” the hospital said.
Back home, the woman had been advised by doctors to undergo a radical procedure to remove the gland, which would have left a scar on her face and could have resulted in face paralysis.
Dr. Varun noted that the patient came to India after hearing a procedure called sialendoscopy, in which a small endoscope is inserted into the duct of the gland and the cause of obstruction is directly addressed. “She underwent the procedure in the last week of September ,” said Dr. Rai. The patient has now been discharged.
Published - November 08, 2019 01:37 am IST
