Woman who drank battery water gets new life at KGMU

Lucknow, March 30 (IANS) Doctors at the King George's Medical University (KGMU) here have given a new lease of life to a 36-year-old woman who had damaged her esophagus (food pipe) and a part of stomach by accidentally drinking acidic battery water.

The surgeons made an alternate 'food pipe' using a segment of the colon of the patient with a procedure called esophago coloplasty that connected the throat to the small intestine directly for digestion.

The surgery was done last week by a team of doctors led by associate professor of the general surgery department Dr Pankaj Kumar.

The patient was discharged on Wednesday after full recovery.

Such a complex surgery was done for the first time in KGMU, said doctors.

The woman, a resident of Gonda, was brought to the General Surgery department of KGMU in December 2022.

"The patient required immediate surgery, but it could not be done because the scars were fresh. Hence, first a tube was put directly into the small intestine using a jejunostomy procedure so that she can be fed food and medicine through it," said Dr Kumar.

"Two months of medication gradually healed the wound in the food pipe, but the narrowing caused due to scarring still persisted. To make esophagus suitable for food intake, we first tried performing endoscopic dilatation in which the narrowed area is stretched through the tube used for endoscopy. However, it did not work," he added.

Thereafter, the doctors decided to perform esophago coloplasty in which a part of the colon (large intestine) was cut out and used to connect the throat to the middle section of the upper intestine.

This acted as an alternate food pipe bypassing the damaged esophagus and the stomach.

The two ends of the colon from where the segment was cut out, were connected to maintain flow of waste after digestion.

Dr Kumar said: "The operation was complex because, if there were any leakages in any part of the intestine, it could have been fatal. Due care was taken to maintain an adequate flow of the blood in the colon during the surgery because any damage would have led to heart or lung failure."

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