Doctors in Kolkata, West Bengal successfully removed a nose pin screw that lodged in a woman's right lung.
The woman was identified as 35-year-old Varsha Sahu. She accidentally inhaled her nose pin screw, which she had been wearing since her marriage 16 or 17 years ago. She thought her nose pin screw had gone into her stomach and would naturally pass through her digestive system.
However, she started facing health issues such as shortness of breath and discomfort. She consulted a doctor after a month of inhaling the nose pin screw, complaining of shortness of breath, persistent cough, and pneumonia. The doctor prescribed medicines, however, that didn't work to treat her condition. Then she consulted a pulmonologist, who performed a CT scan and a chest X-ray. The results of the reports revealed that a small object lodged in her lung and it was identified as the nose pin screw.
Varsha said that she didn't know that the screw had come loose. She was just chatting and she took a deep breath and she inhaled it. She had no idea it went into her airway. She thought it had gone into her stomach.
The pulmonologist used a fibreoptic bronchoscope procedure to remove the object from her lung. But it failed to remove the object. Then she was referred to Dr. Debraj Jash, a pulmonologist at Medica Super Speciality Hospital. Dr. Debraj said that they had to counsel the patient first. She was worried about undergoing a second procedure so soon after the first one, but they explained to her that the human body is designed in such a way that there is no place in it for a foreign object.
They told her there was no way her body was going to accept it and that if left untreated, her pneumonia would keep getting worse. The doctor also said that if she refuses for another fibreoptic bronchoscope, they would have to choose for invasive surgery.
Dr. Debraj Jash said that it is difficult to pull out a sharp object with a regular flexible bronchoscope, the object had been in her lung for more than two weeks and tissues had already grown around it. He further said that they had to be very careful because if during extraction, the screw came in contact with the airway, which is very narrow it could cause injury and lead to bleeding which could cause a calamity.
However, the doctor performed the second bronchoscopy procedure. The procedure took 30 minutes and the doctor successfully removed the nose pin screw and he called it an extremely rare case. Varsha recovered after the procedure and was discharged after four days.
Dr. Debraj Jash said that sometimes they get cases where dry fruits or betel nuts have gone into people's lungs, but most such cases involve young children or elderly people above 80 but a woman patient in her 30s is an exception.
(Input from various sources)
(Rehash/Lavanya Beeraboina/MSM)