A team of doctors of SSKM Hospital gave new lease of life to a 16-month-old female baby on Thursday after removing a nut that got stuck inside her lungs. Aradhya Samanta, a resident of Uttar Rousulpur in the Arambag area of Hooghly district, was brought to the SSKM Hospital’s ENT department from another state-run teaching hospital, N R S Medical College, on Thursday in critical condition with severe cough and respiratory distress.

She was admitted under Dr Arunava Sengupta, head of the ENT department at SSKM. A team of doctors led by Dr Sengupta performed a bronchoscopy surgery on her for about two hours and removed the foreign body. “The toddler was brought to SSKM in a critical condition after being referred by three other government hospitals ~ Arambag sub-divisional hospital, Burdwan Medical College and N R S Medical College. We performed the operation to remove the nut that had ben stuck in her lungs since Tuesday.

The condition of the baby is stable,” Dr Sengupta said. “Most of the state-run teaching and non-teaching district hospitals are yet to have infrastructure for bronchoscopy surgery required for critical cases. The state government has taken initiatives to set up bronchoscopy units in these hospitals within few months,” he added. “We are thankful to the SSKM doctors led by Dr Sengupta who have saved my daughter.

One of the nuts got stuck on Tuesday while she was eating them in our village residence. She started to cough severely with breathlessness since then. We rushed her to the Arambag hospital where the concerned doctor referred the case to Burdwan Medical College and Hospital,” Aradhya’s father, Anjan Samanta, said.

“But her condition deteriorated further with no signs of any improvement at Burdwan Medical College on Wednesday. We did not take any risk and decided to the take her to NRS Hospital in Kolkata. But the doctors at the NRS Hospital referred my baby to SSKM considering her condition. She was virtually gasping when we brought her to SSKM this morning. Doctors took around two hours to bring out the nut from her lungs,” he added.