KGMU surgeons make surgery easier for burn patients

LUCKNOW: Doctors at the King George's Medical University (KGMU) have devised a method to make surgery easy for patients with severe burn injuries and suffering with post burn injury contracture (PBC) in the throat region, a condition where the chin comes close to the chest due to severe burns.

Dr Divya Narain Upadhyaya, senior faculty member, department of plastic surgery, KGMU, along with Dr Tanmay Tiwari of the department of anaesthesia, published a paper explaining how this situation can be dealt with and the results of the surgery can be improved.

“During surgery, inserting an endotracheal tube (ET), used necessarily to maintain proper breathing for the patient in the operating theatre, becomes difficult. This is because with the chin moved towards the chest due to burns the normal windpipe inside the body gets bent making it very difficult to insert a tube for breathing,” said Upadhyaya.

“We avoided using ET and used two different types of supraglottic devices (I-gel and BlockBuster LMA),” he added.

“Our study found that even use of supraglottic devices for PBC patients is a viable option and can reduce the incidence of unwanted cancellation of surgeries in such patients,” said Tiwari.

Doctors used camera laryngoscope which they inserted first into the windpipe during surgery.