The girl is suffering while eating under the big problems. If the three-year-old solid food to eat, she has difficulty swallowing. Often you need to vomit. It is small and thin, 95 percent of children her age are taller and weigh more.
Finally, the parents are looking for with the girl to the University hospital in the Jordanian Irbid. The medical team asks the medical and family history of the child, but the parents have to report anything out of the ordinary. The blood values are normal. A chest x-Ray revealed no abnormalities, write to the doctors in the journal “Annals of Medicine and Surgery”. The mother is not able to assign the complaints to one or more specific foods.
Congestion in the esophagus
The children’s gastroenterologist Eyad Altamimi performs an endoscopy by sliding a tube into the esophagus of the child. He discovered a constriction, which may explain the difficulty in swallowing. Directly in front of it has dilated the esophagus and eat there, the could not pass the constriction is located.
Now the Doctors give the girl a contrast agent and produce again an x-Ray, the narrowing is clearly visible.
The contrast medium (black) fills the esophagus, and thus constitutes a constriction in the middle, and the overlying Aneurysm
The doctors opt for surgery under General anesthesia, in which you want to dilate the esophagus. However, the procedure does not succeed, the narrowed body can’t stretch.
To ensure the nutrition of the child, first of all, the Doctors have an access from the outside directly into the stomach, gastrostomy this procedure is called. Four weeks later, you try again, to stretch the bottleneck – this Time you approach the narrowing on the access from the stomach. But again, you can’t do anything.
Something has also moved the air tube
To find out what is causing the narrowing, give the Doctors the girl again, a contrast agent, and the dining view tube by using a computer tomography. So you can detect a thickening of the soft tissue, which is most to the right, posterior esophageal wall at the marked. In addition, there is seen an approximately 1.5-centimeter-long structure, which narrows the esophagus and in addition the air tube to the left has moved.
Even the Doctors don’t know exactly what you see on the x-ray image – but the Information is sufficient to take a further Operation in the attack. The surgeon to discover the cause of the narrowing and you can remove: It is a small aluminium cover, which is found, for example, on milk cartons. The girl has apparently swallowed a long time ago. The lid is then moved through the esophagus wall and around it has formed in the inflamed tissue, because the body has tried to fight the foreign body. So has narrowed the esophagus and on.
The aluminum lid, the Doctors removed the tissue around the esophagus
In retrospect, the mother recalls that the child had at the age of ten months, a strong fit of coughing and had to pass.
In the coming months, the Doctors need to dilate the esophagus of the girl with a several procedures again. Finally, the small patient is again able to eat solid food. She is gaining weight, her parents are very happy.
