While India is aiming to become the haven of health tourism, the complex surgeries where the doctors are avoiding any incision is becoming more frequent like the one Khatri went through at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital recently.
After going through the distress of two surgical procedures in his salivary duct, Satyender Khatri in his 50s was relieved of a collection of stones, that had gathered in his throat, through a delicate Sialendoscopy here.
Khatri who had complaints of recurrent swelling and pain below the left jaw area on food intake since many years was left with “undetectable” multiple stones in the left submandibular duct region which kept on recurring.
“On CT scan he was found to have a large stone mid way in the submandibular duct of size 7mm and multiple small stones present in the junction of gland and duct with the largest being 4mm in size....It was difficult to perform sialendoscopy, a new procedure introduced in the country, as he had sought multiple opinions before,” Dr Viren Rai, Associate Consultant at the hospital told The Pioneer.
"The procedure is relatively simple in experienced hands and with the sialendoscope we are now able to address the smaller stones at the back of the duct which would have inevitably led to them becoming larger with time and causing recurrence. This procedure of sialendoscopy is a relatively new technique in a developing country such as ours with very few centers even offering it at present.," he added.
In this technique under full anaesthesia, the normal opening of the duct is identified under magnification and then dilated using a special set of dilators, said the doctors.
According to the hospital, , " our country of 1.2 billion we have an estimated six remillion people having stones in the salivary gland duct."