Kovai hospital performs rare surgery on Yemen girl

Coimbatore: Team of doctors at city-based PSG Hospital performed a rare procedure on a 16-year old Yemen national. The teenager girl from Yemen had accidentally consumed acid in December 2017 and she developed blockage of the food pipe and the stomach.

The girl was initially treated at Yemen, where she underwent removal of part of her stomach and self-expanding metal stent was placed in-between the narrowed food pipe, as part of the treatment. However, reportedly the stent had slipped down into the girl’s stomach and she was not able to consume food which resulted in weight loss. Doctors in Yemen were unable to treat the teenage girl. It was in this condition that the girl reached PSG Hospital here.

The teenage girl who weighed 26-kg was admitted to the city hospital in November 2018. “She underwent initial surgery for placing a feeding tube in her intestine and with expert nutrition support she gained 10-kilograms of weight. On January 21, a keyhole procedure was performed and the diseased esophagus and stomach along with the stent were removed. Her food passage was reconstructed by joining her large intestine to the food pipe in neck and to small intestine in the abdomen,” a source from PSG Hospital said. The procedure lasted for ten hours. Doctors at the hospital called the surgery ‘rare’ as removal of a diseased esophagus and stomach with a stent stuck there for many months by key hole surgery is a complex. The patient recovered and she was discharged from the hospital after two weeks. Post surgery, she gained 10-kg of weight and is able to consume food now.