Doctors Remove Plastic Lodged in Infant's Vocal Cords After Choking
Doctors at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center successfully removed a piece of plastic lodged between the vocal cords of a nine-month-old infant from Binyamina who had been choking.
A nine-month-old infant from Binyamina was playing on his home's floor a few days ago when he suddenly began choking. His parents patted his back to dislodge whatever had entered his mouth, but saw nothing come out. His breathing improved, but in the days that followed, he continued to suffer from unusual coughing and hoarseness.
When the symptoms did not subside, his parents brought him to the pediatric emergency room at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center. An X-ray performed on-site showed no findings, but the history of choking and persistent symptoms raised the doctors' suspicions. "In general, an infant can look completely quiet and breathe well, but when he coughed, we clearly heard that it was an unusual cough," says Dr. Tali Teitelbaum, a physician in the ENT department.
In an examination using a tiny camera inserted through the nose, a red piece of plastic about a centimeter long was discovered between the vocal cords, apparently from a ketchup spread packaging that the infant found on the floor and put in his mouth. "The plastic was stuck vertically between his two vocal cords, like a strip, and therefore the air managed to pass around it," explains Prof. Yitzhak Braverman, director of the ear, nose, and throat and head and neck surgery department at Hillel Yaffe. "If it had been in a different position, for example at 90 degrees, it would have closed the airway, and the infant could have choked and died."
The infant was rushed to the operating room. "We rushed urgently to the operating room and I took it out for him," describes Prof. Braverman. According to him, the fact that the infant managed to eat and drink did not rule out the danger: the food goes into the esophagus. The problem was at the entrance to the trachea. "He drank a little and ate a little, probably as happens in the condition of a sick child."
After the foreign body was removed, the infant's respiratory tract was scanned to ensure no additional foreign bodies remained. He remained under observation and after his condition improved, he was discharged home. Doctors emphasize that after a choking incident, persistent unusual coughing, hoarseness, or changes in breathing that do not pass, one must come for an examination, even if the child has returned to breathing normally.
