Dubai: An eight-year-old Saudi girl has regained her ability to speak and breathe after she fell off the balcony of her building four years ago.
After the incident, Ashwaq was in a coma for 20 days and remained in intensive care during this period.
The young girl has been surviving on ventilation ever since, Al Sabq reported.
When the doctors pulled out the respiratory tube, they found that she had lost her speaking ability which was accompanied by difficulty in breathing.
The doctors at King Fahd Central Hospital in Jizan diagnosed the speaking difficulty to be a result of having the ventilator tube in her throat for a long time.
This damaged her vocal cords and resulted in the shortness of breath.
A group of otolaryngologists, led by Dr Mohsen Khardli, teamed up to study the case.
Once the case was assessed, an endoscopy was performed on the site of the injury.
The medical team decided to restructure and repair the larynx (a muscular organ holding the vocal cords) and trachea (system of tubes by which air passes to and from the lungs in vertebrate) to extend the lumen in the larynx.
Ashwaq celebrated with her doctors, nurses and her family members the success of her surgery. She was able to breathe without the need for ventilators.
— Hams Saleh is an intern at Gulf News
