Chicken bone costs Mumbai mom ₹4 lakh, 21 days in hosp

Chicken bone costs Mumbai mom ₹4 lakh, 21 days in hosp 

3.2CM BONE DAMAGED RUBY’S OESOPHAGUS 

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 07.03.2025

Mumbai : A dinner treat turned into a misadventure for Kurla’s Shaikh family. On Feb 3, Ruby Shaikh (name changed), a 34-year-old woman juggling a seven-year-old daughter, a six-monthold son and four in-laws, was enjoying a rare treat — chicken biryani from a local restaurant. Little did she know that a chicken bone would take her on a month-long medical journey that would baffle doctors. The modestly priced biryani left Ruby’s husband, a supervisor in a local factory, with an ₹8 lakh bill, though the hospital later halved it through donations. The 3.2cm chicken bone that damaged Ruby’s oesophagus was extracted on Feb 8. But when doctors at Criticare Asia Hospital began the throat procedure, it vanished from its initial position (C4-C5 vertebral discs). X-ray and ultrasound examinations couldn’t find it in the chest or abdomen. A CT scan, performed while the patient was intubated, revealed its unexpected upward movement to the nasopharynx, the topmost part of the throat. 

The operation lasted eight hours instead of two hours. Immediately after choking on Feb 3, Ruby arrived at the hospital where an X-ray scan showed a foreign object in her neck. Moved upwards, 

 Due to effect of anaesthesia, bone moved upwards: Doc 

Ruby refused CT scans and admission but returned two days later with fever, high blood pressure, and oral infection. This time, through endoscopy and CT scans, doctors found the foreign body in the cervical oesophagus, having caused bilateral perforations. ENT surgeon Dr Sanjay Helale said, “Scans carried out before the surgery revealed the bone was still in the earlier position.” He chose an open surgery as the bone was close to the carotid artery to the brain and the patient’s perforated food pipe needed repair. “Perhaps due to manipulations of the oesophagus during dissection or due to the effect of anaesthesia, the bone moved upwards,” said Dr Helale, who plans to send the case to a medical journal for publication. Dr Ajay Bhandarwar, head of the surgery department at J J Hospital, Byculla, said the movement from the food pipe back to the throat was unusual. 

Ruby, who was fed through a tube for weeks, has meanwhile told her husband that she will not eat biryani or cook it.