Doctors extract LED bulb from 7-month-old’s lung

Doctors at Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital in Parel have extracted a LED bulb from the lung of a seven-month-old girl who had swallowed it while playing with a toy mobile phone. The bulb was two-centimetre in diameter. Ariba Khan, whose family is from Chiplun in Ratnagiri district, had to wait for a week before the doctors could perform a bronchoscopy to remove the object as physicians in Ratnagiri couldn’t diagnose why she had persistent cough and fever. Unaware of the incident, her parents took her to doctors in Ratnagiri to treat the cough and fever.
“The parents initially thought that Ariba had swallowed a thread or a small part of a toy. They took her to a local physician who couldn’t diagnose the condition. Her condition deteriorated within a week,” said doctors from the hospital.
After being advised by relatives, the family admitted the child to Wadia Hospital. Dr Divya Prabhat, head of ENT department at the hospital, said an X-Ray report revealed that there was an object in the right lung. Ariba was put on antibiotics to prevent and control the infection.
“A primary bronchoscopy that the lung was full of granulation tissues (tissue and microscopic blood vessels that form on the surfaces of a wound during the healing process). The tissues were hiding the object, thus making its removal difficult ,” said Dr Prabhat.
The doctors continued with intravenous course of antibiotics and steroids for two days to clear the infection and granulations. On the third day, another bronchoscopy was performed, when the bulb became visible inside the lung.
“Within two minutes this object, which initially looked like a strand of wire, was removed using forceps. To our surprise the object was a two-centimetre in diametre,” Dr Prabhat added.