Endoscopy gets clip out of baby

Last month, 15-month-old Paalavee sat playing with two hair clips at her Dahisar home. Her father, Amit Dandekar, left the room for a few seconds to see off a guest and when he returned, he noticed that Paalavee had only one hair clip in her hand. The other could not be traced. HT Correspondent reports.

Last month, 15-month-old Paalavee sat playing with two hair clips at her Dahisar home. Her father, Amit Dandekar, left the room for a few seconds to see off a guest and when he returned, he noticed that Paalavee had only one hair clip in her hand. The other could not be traced.

HT Image

“We decided to take her to a doctor, just in case she had swallowed it. An X-ray found that the metal clip was in her stomach,” said Dandekar (34) a human resource training professional.

The doctor asked them to wait for two days, to allow the 4-cm-long clip to pass out of the body naturally.

But an X-ray taken on June 5 showed that the hair clip was still in the stomach and Paalavee was referred to the gastroenterology department at the Kokilaben Hospital, Andheri.

She was scheduled for an endoscopic removal of the hair clip under general anaesthesia at 8 pm on June 5.

But the situation turned tricky and what was to be a simple, 10-minute procedure became a complicated two-hour one.

Digestive acids in the stomach had peeled off the clip’s plastic layer and broken it into two parts with sharp edges.

“Had the clip pierced through the stomach lining and entered the abdominal cavity, it could have had life threatening complications,” said Agal.

It took 45 minutes to remove the small part with grasping forceps.

“The small diameter of the 15-month-old’s intestine made removing the second part of the clip difficult,” said Agal.

Paalavee was discharged after a day in the hospital. A month on, she is doing fine.

“I am glad she didn’t have to go through open surgery. The recovery would have been more difficult then,” said Dandekar.