BHOPAL, Feb. 4 -- A multidisciplinary team from the Departments of Surgical Gastroenterology and Cardiothoracic Surgery at AIIMS Bhopal successfully removed a denture that had accidentally slipped into an elderly patient's food pipe.
The complex and delicate procedure was performed using an advanced thoracoscopic (VATS) technique, avoiding conventional open-chest surgery. This patient had few fainting episodes; initially thought to be due to seizures but these were found out to be due to heart problem later for which a pacemaker was recently implanted.
During one fainting episode, the patient inadvertently lost his denture. Shortly thereafter, he began experiencing difficulty in swallowing. Subsequent medical evaluations revealed that the...