Doctors Remove Sharp Wire Lodged in Woman’s Neck in Pune| Dr. Prasun Mishra
PUNE: When Anupama accidentally swallowed a small piece of a sharp wire while eating rice, she never thought the wire would pierce through the food pipe and get lodged in her neck. “I only had some pricking sensation in my throat and a little difficulty in swallowing. I thought the prickly thing would go into my stomach and get purged the next day as is often the case with objects that people unknowingly swallow,” Anupama said. Anupama had moved on and even forgot the episode thereafter. However, about ten days later, she started experiencing prickly sensations and consulted doctors at Bharati Hospital.
The sharp thin wire had made its way out of the food pipe and reached up to the thyroid gland in the neck. It was very close to the jugular vein and the recurrent nerve. We localised it using an intraoperative X-ray (C-arm) and removed it gently with thehelp of an external cut (incision) right below it on the neck,” said the hospital’s ENT surgeons Dr Prasun Mishra and Dr Jeevan Galagali.
“The CT scan showed that the wire had pierced the upper part of the food pipe and was lying in the neck close to the thyroid gland. Also, it was closer to large blood vessels — the carotid and the jugular,” they said. The surgery was tricky considering the wire being small but very sharp and the presence of vital structures in the neck. “It’s (the wire’s) proximity to vital structures like large blood vessels, thyroid nerves made the surgerymore challenging. But we did it successfully without affecting the surrounding vital structures,” said ENT surgeon Dr Viraj Gaikwad, who was also part of the surgeons’ team which removed the wire. The take-home message is clear. “Small sharp objects like stapler pins or sharp pins if ingested accidentally can behave in a different way. It can reach the stomach and get passed through stool. But vague pain and swallowing difficulty lasting for few days after foreign body ingestion should be investigated and treated,” said hospital deputy medical director Dr. Jitendra Oswal.
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