A team of doctors at the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital (NBMCH) here successfully removed a whistle lodged in the right main bronchus of a seven-year-old boy through an emergency medical procedure.

Supratim Ghosh of Rampur, Barobhisa in Coochbehar district, had accidentally aspirated the whistle while playing on Friday morning.

His parents took him to a local hospital, but due to the complexity of the case, the doctors there referred the child to the NBMCH that same evening, said a source.

Doctors at the ENT and head-neck surgery department of the NBMCH examined the child on arrival, NBMCH sources said.

“It was found that he was experiencing mild respiratory distress, though he had remained hemodynamically stable with normal oxygen saturation levels. A CT scan confirmed that the foreign object was lodged in the right main bronchus, a critical airway passage,” said ahospital source.

Radheshyam Mahato, head of the ENT and head-neck surgery department at the NBMCH said that given the urgency of the case, the medical team decided to perform a rigid bronchoscopy on Supratim under general anaesthesia on Saturday morning.

Rigid bronchoscopy is a procedure that examines the trachea and upper airways of a patient using a rigid tube.

“The procedure was conducted on February 22 morning (Saturday) and we have successfully removed the whistle in three pieces without complications. It was a challenging case as the foreign body was lodged deep in the airway, posing a potential risk to the child’s breathing,” the senior doctor said.

The surgical team included Goutam Das, Monideepa Sarkar, Soumendu Bhaumik, Sandip Mondal, and others. The anaesthesia team was led by Tarapada Das.

Das, one of the doctors from the team, said that after the surgery Supratim was shifted to the post-operative recovery unit.

“He is in stable condition and remains under medical observation. The child is recovering well, and we expect a full recovery soon,” he said.

Sources said that thisis the second case in recent times where the NBMCH doctors have successfully removed a foreign object from apatient’s airway.

This is not an isolated case for the largest government-run hospital of north Bengal. NBMCH doctors had also successfully removed a 4cm hijab pin from a 16-year-old girl’s bronchus through an emergency bronchoscopy in December 2024.