PUNE: A 20-year-old college student almost lost his voice after 33 glass pieces got stuck in his throat when his two-wheeler crashed into a pickup truck in Chakan. Surgery and care helped him regain it in just over a month.The biker was without a helmet when he collided head-on with the four-wheeler. He was flung into its wind shield and the glass cut deeply into his neck. He was bleeding heavily and semi-conscious when brought to the emergency ward of a private hospital, where doctors removed all the glass pieces after one-and-a-half-hour of surgery and ligated the blood vessels.
Dr Manohar Suryawanshi, ENT and head & neck surgeon at Medicover Hospital, said during the critical surgery, the team found that the cut was too close to his voice box, also known as the larynx, with several major blood vessels—including those to the brain — severely damaged. Some nerves were also affected. They feared it had badly affected his voice.Dr Suryawanshi said, “The accident and the surgery took place on April 21. The larynx was swollen. We had to remove 33 glass pieces from the patients’ throat, some were so tiny and deeply embedded that it took immense precision and patience to remove them. The patient recovered and when he came to us on May 29, his voice was as it was before the accident. It is a rare outcome in such critical injuries.”Dr Ninad Patil, consultant neurosurgeon, who first attended to the patient, said he was without a helmet and the injury suggested possible head trauma. “He was admitted under my care for a neurological evaluation, but we saw that the injury on his throat was much more severe,” he added.The patient was discharged in a stable condition on April 29. He said the impact of the accident was so severe that the victim was unable to recall what had happened. “Everything went dark after the crash,” he added.Dr Kiran Kumar Jadhav, associate professor in the surgery department at BJ Medical College and Sassoon General Hospital, said, “Such injuries to the vocal cords are rare even in our trauma department.”He added that the most common trauma cases that come to them report injuries to the trachea, also known as the windpipe. “If the unilateral nerves’ supply and the vascular supply is maintained until complete recovery only then can the original voice can be restored. It is a difficult and challenging process.”
