What started as a seemingly fun experience with paan, ended up becoming a life-scare for a 12-year-old girl and her family in Bengaluru. The girl was left with a hole in her stomach after she consumed liquid nitrogen paan (betel leaf).
The girl developed stomach discomfort last month, following which she was rushed to Narayana Multispecialty Hospital in HSR Layout. The doctors diagnosed her with perforation peritonitis, a serious condition involving a hole in her stomach.
During the surgery, a 4x5 cm piece of her stomach on the lesser curvature was removed.
Dr Vijay HS, Surgical Gastroenterologist, Narayana Health, who operated upon the girl said, "What had happened to this girl is that she had a hole in the stomach around 4x5 centimetres, what we call a necrotic patch or an easy term to understand, dead patch, which was secondary to consumption of liquid nitrogen. This could have been because of two reasons - first, sudden expansion of air inside (the stomach), and second, the temperature could have caused the burn."
Dr Vijay HS further explained that liquid nitrogen has two properties which can cause problems for a person's health.
"First is the temperature itself, which is around -190 to -200 degrees Celsius. Just imagine the normalisers around 0 degree which you hold for a long time. You can have discomfort, hands going numb and all . At-190 degrees Celsius, you are expected to have more damage. This is technically called a cold burn, just like a heart burn. A cold burn is like the same, tissue gets damaged, just like a burn," he said.
"Another property is the expansion of liquid nitrogen. That is, 1 gram of liquid nitrogen can expand up to 600-700ml of gases. That means that for one gram you consume, 600 ml of gases has to be expelled. Most of the time, the body will not be able to handle this... A hole can happen at a point which can lead to a life-threatening case," Dr VIjay HS added.
In the present instance, the girl was brought to the emergency ward and a team of doctors conducted primary evaluation. They then conducted a CT Scan on the girl, which showed perforation peritonitis.
The doctors then opted for major surgery on the 12-year-old.
"When we looked into the abdomen, there was a patch, a necrotic patch on one of the parts of the stomach. At the same time, we had to find out if any other damage was caused, and we had to do something called incorporative endoscopy where we use cameras to ascertain any other damage. Luckily, she had only one patch which was removed or excised, then we had to do a suture", Dr Vijay HS said.
The curvature was removed on time and the girl was saved.
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