New Delhi: Doctors at a leading city hospital recently operated on an Iraqi patient and removed 53 stones from her salivary duct and gland. The stones were removed painstakingly one by one using baskets and forceps without any cut in the body. The entire procedure took two hours.
The 66-year-old woman from Baghdad was suffering from recurrent attacks of pain and swelling of the right-sided parotid gland after consuming food or drink. This wreaked havoc on her quality of life with her having to place severe restrictions on what she could eat.
She was diagnosed with multiple stones in her right-sided parotid duct with the largest stone being about 8 mm in size stuck midway between the origin and end of the duct.
She came to India having heard of a procedure called sialendoscopy, where a small endoscope measuring just 1.3 mm is inserted into the duct of the parotid gland and the cause of obstruction is directly addressed.
She underwent the procedure in Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, where the endoscopy of the parotid duct revealed that the large stone seen on CT scan was actually a cluster of smaller stones impacted together.
According to Dr Varun Rai, the ENT consultant at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, the biggest challenge was to remove all the stones without causing any injury to the gland or the thin 3 mm wide duct.
“Extensive review of current literature a single parotid gland having more than 25 stones within the duct is not previously reported. Due to the advent of sialendoscopy, these types of surgeries can be accomplished without the need of any cut and complete functional gland preservation is the norm,” said Dr Rai.
