Doctors divide infant’s stomach to form food pipe

An 11-month-old baby was finally able to taste food after Sion Hospital doctors reconstructed his gastric tube.

Soon after Ritesh Yadav was born, his mother realised that the food being fed to her son wasn’t reaching his stomach.

“He initially had congestion in his chest. Later when I breast-fed him, the milk would come back out. It’s only when we brought him to Sion Hospital that we found out he doesn’t have a food pipe and that’s why the food never reached his stomach,” said Seema Yadav, his mother. The doctors initially inserted a feeding tube straight into his stomach through which the baby could be fed. But recently, the doctors reconstructed his food pipe so that Ritesh can eat food like a normal person.

“In Ritesh’s case, the food pipe was not developed. We were unable to reconstruct it earlier as he was too young. We divided the stomach in two parts and made a tube out of one, placing it behind the chest bones so that it extends right up to the neck, forming a new food pipe,” explained Dr Paras Kothari, head of the paediatric department, Sion Hospital.

“We initially approached private hospitals and the cost of operation was quoted as Rs1.5 lakh. We didn’t have that much money. The doctors at Sion Hospital were very co-operative. We were so happy with the way they took care of my son that we decided to name him after Dr Ritesh Ranjan, one of the team members who operated on our son,” said Seema.

“We have retained the tube in the stomach for psychological reasons, since the baby has been feeding via the inlet since birth. Once he develops his sense of taste by eating normally, we’ll remove the inlet too,” said Dr Guruse Sandlas.

The doctors are presently studying how a food pipe made from the stomach reacts in the long run.