more-in When 45-year-old Kalidoss of Karnodai in Red Hills was admitted to the Government Stanley Hospital with abdominal pain on June 8, doctors did not anticipate the challenges the case would present. Investigations found he had liver abscess, requiring immediate surgery. A chest x-ray revealed the presence of foreign object in his right bronchus. “For any surgery above the abdomen, we administer general anaesthesia. But since we noticed a foreign body and the patient admitted to having swallowed a blade, we decided to do the surgery under epidural anaesthesia so as not to disturb the foreign body,” said Kumudha Lingaraj, head of anaesthesia. Kalidoss was put on a ventilator for two days to maintain the blade’s position. Once stabilised, he was taken to the operation theatre for the second time to remove the foreign body. “We used the fibre optic bronchoscope to visualise the object. It was a tedious process as the patient was continuously breathing and we had to intubate him and then remove the object without damaging the airway. He had folded the blade in two and swallowed it. Just as we removed the tube, we saw another part of the blade. So we had to intubate him again to retrieve it,” Dr. Kumudha said. Investigations also revealed there was a 10 cm stick in his intestine and doctors had to operate on him a third time to remove it. According to doctors, Kalidoss had a psychiatric condition. Four days after the pieces of the blade were removed, even as he was on ventilator, a team of three surgeons led by C. Balamurugan did a loop ileostomy to remove the stick. Hospital dean Ponnambalam Namasivayam said it was a challenging situation, given the patient’s condition. “In a private hospital the procedures would have cost the family ?3 to ?5 lakh. Here it was done under Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme,” he said. Kalidoss will be discharged in a week, the dean said.

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