Four-year-old boy swallows goddess'; doctor retrieves it without surgery

Bengaluru, Aug 20: In a bizarre incident, a four-year-old boy accidentally swallowed a small idol of a Hindu goddess' in Raichur. Fortunately, a doctor managed to retrieve the idol from the boy's stomach without any surgery.

"The idol was gifted to us five days ago by our neighbours. My son Saiprakash was so fond of that idol that he carried it everywhere he went, including his school,", said the boy's father Kashinath, who is a primary school teacher.

On Thursday the boy complained to his mother of nausea. She had an inkling that he might have swallowed the idol and looked around the house for it.

When she couldn't find it, she realised that he had swallowed it and called up Kashinath who was away at school. The boy was immediately rushed to Clarity Diagnostic Centre for further check-up and he was put through a series of tests.

Dr Vishwanath Reddy, the treating gastroenterologist, said, "Through an X-ray we confirmed that an idol (4cms x 3cms) was stuck in the abdomen of the child and luckily it had not reached the small intestine. We had to remove the idol immediately because we were not sure what the idol was made off and this could release a lot of toxins and chemicals hazardous to the child's life."

The doctors decided that surgery was not an option as it meant prolonged hospitalisation and since it was a child, it could be dangerous.

"We finally used a roth net retriever (resembling a fishing net) attached to an endoscope and retrieved the foreign object. The chal lenge was that we had to take it off in a longitudinal direction because if we took it out in a latiitudinal direction it would have harmed the food pipe causing injury to the child. The whole procedure lasted about 20 minutes and finally the idol was out."

Because of being in the abdomen for about four-five hours, it had degenerated.