Mumbai: A 10-year-old girl from Mumbai underwent surgery to remove part of her lung after doctors discovered a pen cap lodged deep inside her airway, where it had reportedly remained for more than seven years while she was repeatedly misdiagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) and asthma.
Years Of Misdiagnosis
According to a report by The Times of India, the girl, identified as Mysha, had been suffering from a persistent cough and gradual weight loss since early childhood. Over the years, her family visited multiple hospitals, but the actual cause of her illness remained undetected.
During this period, she was prescribed several courses of antibiotics, evaluated for tuberculosis despite a negative sputum test, and later diagnosed with asthma, for which she was treated with inhalers. Despite undergoing treatment for these conditions, her symptoms persisted, leaving doctors puzzled.
Pen Cap Discovered
The turning point came when she was admitted to SRCC Children's Hospital (Narayana Health), where a CT scan revealed a collapsed portion of her left lung. The imaging raised suspicion that an obstruction, rather than an infection alone, was responsible for her recurring respiratory problems.
Doctors then performed a bronchoscopy, a procedure that uses a thin, camera-equipped tube to examine the airways, and discovered a plastic pen cap lodged near the left lower lobe bronchus. The foreign object was successfully removed with the assistance of an ENT team.
Although Mysha's condition improved after the pen cap was extracted, doctors found that years of chronic infection caused by the lodged object had already resulted in irreversible damage to part of her lung. After monitoring her recovery for several weeks, surgeons removed nearly one-third of the affected lung. Doctors said she is now expected to recover well and lead a normal life.
Doctors Urge Early Diagnosis
Medical experts say such cases can easily be misdiagnosed as asthma or tuberculosis, especially when the inhaled object is made of plastic and does not appear clearly on a standard chest X-ray.
Children who accidentally inhale small objects may initially experience coughing or choking, but if the object remains trapped in the airway, symptoms such as persistent cough, wheezing, breathlessness, recurrent pneumonia and repeated chest infections can closely resemble common respiratory diseases.
Doctors generally suspect an inhaled foreign object when pneumonia repeatedly affects the same area of the lung, symptoms fail to improve despite appropriate treatment, or CT scans indicate a possible airway obstruction. In such situations, bronchoscopy is considered the most effective diagnostic tool.
Experts have urged parents not to ignore a persistent cough that does not respond to treatment, repeated chest infections affecting the same part of the lung, unexplained wheezing or breathing difficulties, particularly if symptoms began after a choking episode.
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