Sharjah: A four-year-old Australian boy who was left in critical condition from an aggressive chest infection is on the mend after undergoing a complex three-hour surgery in Sharjah.
Earlier, Khalid, a child of Lebanese and Australian expats, had been admitted to several hospitals with a chest infection, which kept getting worse.
After a week of antibiotics in a previous hospital, he showed no signs of improvement.
With a high fever and difficulty in breathing due to purulent pleural connection with sepsis, which is the excess of fluid in the pleura — a membrane that surrounds the lungs — doctors referred him to University Hospital Sharjah.
Once transferred, he was received in critical condition by the hospital’s paediatric ward.
There, examinations revealed that the infection was stopping improvement, so it was decided that the purulent (pus-like) fluid near the lungs needed to be drained.
The emergency evacuation was performed by a hospital surgeon, who made a small incision into the wall of Khalid’s chest.
But during the follow up, the patient’s radiological exam showed resistant multiloculated pockets of pus in the pleural cavity.
“Khalid’s first few days showed improvement, but unfortunately, it did not last long,” said Khalid Khalfan Al Ali, a consultant surgeon.
On the ninth day, the boy’s condition was not optimal and his temperature continued to rise.
Further radiological exams with CT scan of the chest and blood work showed that the boy’s pneumonia had resulted in small cavities within the four-year-old boy’s pleura. The situation was classified as severe.
A second surgical intervention was decided by the surgical team to alleviate the child’s symptoms. The length of the entire surgery, which had no complications, was under three hours.
Following the successful procedure, the boy’s condition immediately improved and recovered for the next 24 hours.
After the paediatric team stabilised his condition, the child was then released from intensive care. He was then discharged, and has made a full recovery.
“You don’t expect your child to have to go through an ordeal like this at the age of four,” said Zena, the boy’s mother.
“This was a terrifying experience that had a happy end.”
