Enter the trouble zone

As an ENT specialist, Dr Neelam Vaid has seen many unusual cases in and out of her clinic. Most of them, however, centre around the unwel...

As an ENT specialist, Dr Neelam Vaid has seen many unusual cases in and out of her clinic. Most of them, however, centre around the unwelcome presence of a foreign body that may have entered the nose, ear or throat and created severe complications.

“One case that immediately comes to mind is of a 40-year-old teacher I treated about four months back. She used to wear dentures for two front teeth. Apparently, one evening, while she was having dinner, she discovered that the dentures were missing. She didn’t realise what had happened. But soon it became difficult for her to swallow food. After some time she couldn’t even swallow her own saliva. That was when her family and she realised that perhaps her dentures had loosened and she had taken them in with her food.

“She was rushed to the hospital. I received a call at midnight and was asked to come to KEM Hospital. The X-ray we took clearly showed the dentures stuck in the food pipe. What was worse was that the wires of the dentures had got entangled with the muscles and nerves inside the oesophagus.

“There was no option other than operating. So we opened up her neck from the side and extracted the dentures carefully, so as to cause minimum damage. The patient had to be hospitalised and fed by tube for seven days. While discharging, she was given explicit instructions to eat only soft food for a week – and the first thing she ate on reaching home was bhakri! In the evening, she returned to the hospital with severe pain and a swollen neck. This time, though, we could treat her externally. Now, of course, she is fine and a little more careful about her denture fitting, I’m sure.”

Vaid warns that though this case was the only one of its kind handled by her, there are dangers of this incident recurring since many people tend to wear ill-fitting dentures and need to be educated on its dangers.

Yet another unusual case she cites is of a four-year-old boy who came to be treated for a cold that refused to go away. “The cold had been around for four months. It had become so bad that the skin below the boy’s nose had started to peel off due to the continuous running and the consequent wiping.

“I looked into his nostrils and found that it seemed too congested. So I told his parents that I would like to investigate it further. The child was given anaesthesia, and when I began to clear the nostril passage, what tumbled out was a small pebble. This was followed by a betel leaf that had inside it more small stones, gravel and mud, all neatly rolled and shoved up the nostril. This had been done by the kid himself and had been there all these months, causing an infection which was mistaken for an unusually stubborn cold!’ Talk about having a nose for trouble.