He put a piece of plastic in his mouth and risked suffocating but was saved by an emergency tracheotomy at the Cannizzaro hospital in Catania. The protagonist is an eight-month-old baby who, with a sudden movement, put the residue of a toy chewed by his dog into his mouth. The mother saw him but didn't have time to reach him before that piece of plastic had already been swallowed.
While the child began to gasp, the woman attempted to extract that foreign body, also trying unblocking maneuvers, but without success. Alone at home and without the possibility of taking the car, she ran down the street, blocked a motorist and had him taken to the pediatric emergency room of the Cannizzaro hospital.
"Severe respiratory failure due to a foreign body obstructing the tracheal lumen, causing worsening respiratory distress", the doctors explained to the parents. The director of Anesthesia and Resuscitation, Savino Borraccino, the ENT specialist Alfio Azzolina and the thoracic surgeon Francesco Tornambene intervened immediately: due to the severity of what was happening, an immediate life-saving intervention was needed. A tracheotomy was performed on the child and then, via laryngoscopic procedure, the foreign body was definitively removed.
Mattia is safe, but reported significant edema of the upper airways: he remained in intensive care for several days. Transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit of the Garibaldi hospital, he continued his stay in the ENT department. He completed his ninth month of life on a hospital bed, but spent Christmas happily at home with a small wound in his neck and, above all, without having suffered any respiratory or neurological outcomes.
(Unioneonline/D)
