Kolkata: Doctors at Medical College Hospital Kolkata (MCHK) deployed an innovative magnet-assisted retrieval of an impacted airway foreign body on Thursday. The procedure was done on a six-year-old child who had swallowed a toy magnet two days ago. The challenging intervention prompted doctors at the state-run hospital to think out of the box to devise the innovative retrieval technique.The parents of the girl from Maheshpur, Baduria, rushed her to the ENT department of MCHK on Nov 2, after she had swallowed the toy magnet, with a history of a large magnet accidentally lodged in her respiratory tract.Due to its peculiar shape and configuration, the foreign body had traversed the trachea and descended into the right bronchial tree, resulting in respiratory distress and posing a potentially life-threatening risk. The child was subsequently admitted to the ENT department for further management.Following initial stabilisation, doctors attempted retrieving the foreign body through rigid bronchoscopy. However, owing to its considerable size, shape and firm impaction within the bronchus, conventional retrieval using bronchoscopy forceps proved unsuccessful. The doctors gave up after an hour in the OT.Since the foreign body needed retrieval at the earliest, the treating doctors were even referring the child to the cardiothoracic department for an open surgery. That is when a doctor friend of ENT Professor Diptanshu Mukhopadhyay suggested an attempt using a magnet at the tip of the device for extracting the object.Early on Thursday morning, Mukhopadhyay visited a lathe machine in Manicktala with a piece of magnet he purchased from the market to fabricate it.“Since the magnet the doctor got was not very powerful I instead got him a block of powerful magnet from where I fabricated three pieces according to his description. He came around 8 am, left around 9 am. Even as he wanted to pay me, I refused as his motive was to save a child,” said Prabhakar Kanrar.The ENT professor came straight to the hospital with the specially fabricated, small, elongated rectangular magnet (reported to be 3 mm in length) prepared by Kanrar to facilitate the removal of the impacted foreign body.By the team under the leadership of ENT head Soumendranath Bandyopadhyay, Diptanshu Mukhopadhyay and Debashish Ghosh from the department of anaesthesiology, a novel magnet-assisted retrieval approach was undertaken.The specially designed magnet was attached to the tip of the bronchoscopy forceps to facilitate engagement with the larger impacted magnet. Following this innovative approach and an additional surgical opening in the anterior region of the airway, the large foreign body was successfully retrieved using forceps by Professor Diptanshu Mukhopadhyay.Following the successful intervention, bilateral lung ventilation was restored. The child was subsequently transferred to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for close monitoring and further management under the supervision of the paediatric department. She is now gradually recovering.“The doctor called me after completing the procedure saying that the innovation has worked. I am quite in awe that there are doctors who still go all the way out to save patients,” said Kanrar.
