Delhi | Boy Who Couldn’t Speak For 7 Years Gets Voice Back In Medical Miracle: Report

The boy named Shrikant had to be kept on a ventilator for a long time post the injury.

Representational Image | PTI

New Delhi: A boy, who breathed through a tracheostomy tube for over 10 years, underwent a complicated but successful surgery at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in the national capital. The 13-year-old had suffered a head injury as a toddler.

The boy named Shrikant had to be kept on a ventilator for a long time post the injury.

The long-term ventilation narrowed the windpipe of the boy, who then underwent a tracheostomy in which the doctors inserted a tube into the windpipe by creating an opening in the neck.

This development took place as there was no airway for him to breathe normally due to a long period of tracheostomy and a missing portion of the windpipe.

The doctors at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said that the boy had neither spoken nor eaten normally for the last seven years.

“When I first saw the patient, I felt it was going to be a very complicated airway and voice box surgery. I had not seen anything like this in my 15 years of practice,” the news agency quoted Dr Manish Munjal, Senior Consultant, ENT Department, as saying.

“The child had 100 per cent stenosis (blockage) of the cricoid and tracheal complex (air pipe),” added Dr Munjal.

The hospital formed a panel of doctors from the departments of Thoracic Surgery, ENT, Paediatric Intensive Care and Anaesthesia to perform this rare and complex procedure.

“We decided to attempt complete 'Crico-tracheal resection' of the affected disease airway segment,” said Dr Sabyasachi Bal, Chairperson, Department of Thoracic Surgery.

“This is a complicated and challenging surgery and there is a high risk of failure which sometimes may also lead to death. But the child did not have any other option and the same was explained to the family,” he added.

The boy was earlier on April 23 wheeled inside the operation theatre.

“Since 4 cm of windpipe near the voice box was completely destroyed and non-recoverable, our first challenge was to reduce this gap by bringing the upper and lower segments of airway as close as possible. For this, 'Laryngeal Drop' procedure was performed to bring down the voice box from its normal position,” Dr Munjal said.

“Simultaneously, the lower part of the windpipe was released from its surrounding attachment in the chest and pulled towards the voice box,” Dr Bal added.

The most important and difficult part was to operate on the badly stenosed (blocked) cricoid bone.

“We used a system of drills to widen the severely stenosed portion of cricoid bone. We had to be extra careful to preserve the very minute laryngeal nerves (voice nerves),” Dr Munjal said.

“Had these been damaged, the child's voice would have never come back,” he added.

The surgery was successful, but there were more challenges as the doctors said the post-surgery management was very important.

Dr Anil Sachdev, Director Paediatrics Intensive Care, Department of Paediatrics, said that Shrikant had a very high risk of airway leak into the chest wall, which could have been lethal.

Therefore, he was kept in neck flexion (chin locked down towards the chest position) for three days.

“Also, he was kept on low pressure oxygen support so that he did not develop any traumatic air leak. He was also kept in ICU for three days and the recovery was uneventful,” he said.

Shrikant has now been discharged and is in a stable condition.