Due to eating too much bamboo shoots and persimmons, a 6-year-old child had to have emergency stomach surgery.
The girl came to the hospital with severe abdominal pain, bloating, and vomiting. Upon examination, the doctor discovered many solid masses of food residue in her intestines and stomach.
The Department of General Pediatric Surgery, Obstetrics and Pediatrics Center, Phu Tho Provincial General Hospital has just successfully performed emergency surgery on a 6-year-old patient with intestinal obstruction due to food residue.
Dr. Nguyen Duc Lan, Head of the Department, said that a 6-year-old girl named Vu Nguyen Thao N., residing in Phu Ninh district, Phu Tho, came to the hospital in a state of fatigue, bloating, vomiting a lot of yellow-green fluid, severe abdominal pain, and constipation.
The patient's mother said that the child had previously eaten a lot of stir-fried bamboo shoots (boiled bamboo shoots soaked in water), pickled persimmons, and figs. Three days before being admitted to the hospital, the child began to have a stomachache, vomited a lot, and had a bloated stomach. Thinking it was a common digestive problem, the family gave the child digestive medicine, but it did not help.
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The doctor had to open the stomach to remove the large, solid mass of food from the child. |
At the hospital, examination and X-ray results showed that the child had a small intestinal obstruction, with prominent intestinal loops suspected to be caused by food debris. Immediately, the child was scheduled for emergency surgery.
The surgery lasted 2 hours. During the surgery, the doctor found a lot of fluid in the patient's abdomen, a dilated loop of small intestine, a hard mass of food residue measuring 2x3cm that completely blocked the intestine, and many smaller pieces of food residue above the blockage. In addition, the stomach had 2 large masses of food residue, 3x3cm in size.
To treat it, the doctor crushed the food residue, and passed the liquid down to the colon. As for the two large residue masses in the stomach, the doctor had to cut them open to remove them, then wash the abdominal cavity.
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Two large masses of food were removed from the stomach. |
After surgery, the patient's health is now stable, he can drink milk and eat porridge, and will be discharged after 1 week.
According to Dr. Lan, if intestinal obstruction is not detected and operated early, it can easily lead to the risk of infection, poisoning, intestinal necrosis, multiple organ failure, and even death.
To avoid intestinal obstruction due to food, people should not eat too much food containing a lot of fiber and latex such as figs, jackfruit bran, bamboo shoots, sapodilla when hungry, especially the elderly and children.
