Surgeons of Care Hospitals have successfully operated a 33-week-old premature infant (a girl) who had Bilateral Congenital Choanal Atresia, a condition in which the infant’s nasal airways are blocked by bones.
The surgeons re-established the nasal passage by taking up surgery that involved using a one millimetre drill to remove the bones that were blocking the passage.
Choanal Atresia is a developmental failure of the nasal cavity and surgical repair is recommended in the first few weeks of birth in bilateral cases because both the nasal passages are blocked. Doctors said that by sheer nature, in the first few months of life, infants are obligate nose breathers, which means they can only breathe through nose and the only time they breathe through their mouths is when they cry.
“Infants with such condition die instantly after birth due to asphyxia because they can’t breath. However, this baby girl was immediately kept on a ventilator at NICE Hospitals where she was born. Later, the doctors referred her to us and we quickly decided to do the surgery,” said Head, ENT, Care Hospitals, Dr. N. Vishnu S Reddy.
Doctors said that infants with such a condition are born once for every 7,000 live births. “We have sophisticated medical equipment including drills of one millimetre thickness. Along with nasal endoscopy, we drilled inside the bony obstruction to establish the nasal passage. Before surgery, we kept the infant for a week on ventilator and waited for her lungs to develop because we had to do the surgery under general anaesthesia,” Dr. Vishnu explained.
After restoring the passage, doctors inserted nasal stents, thin plastic tubes that are inserted into the child’s nostrils after they underwent a nasal surgery. The stents keep the nostrils open so that the infant can breathe properly and allow nostrils heal.
