LED bulb found in baby's lung

When seven-month-old Ariba Khan suffered from a cough and fever, her parents took her to the local physician thinking it was a routine illness. When the X-Ray showed a wire strand in her right bronchus, they thought she had swallowed a thread and the doctor advised them to wait till she passed it naturally through her stools.

But the doctors at Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital in Parel were surprised when they fished out a LED bulb that the Chiplun-resident had swallowed while playing with a toy cell phone.

"Ariba was given antibiotics and steroids for three days to clear the infection and granulation of airway which blocked the bulb," said Dr Divya Prabhat, head of the ENT Department. "Then, a bronchoscopy was performed and within two minutes, the foreign body was removed using forceps. To our surprise, it was a 2 cm LED bulb."

The parents waited for a week for the "thread" to pass and then consulted the doctors at the Parel hospital.

"We inserted bronchoscope through her mouth without any cut or stitches," says Dr Prabhat.