Dr. Salem Bazraah, with his medical team at Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital.

A seven-year-old girl who was suffering from sickle cell anemia had a serious medical complication where an accumulation of stones in her gall bladder blocked the bile duct causing the bile to rise to dangerous levels. But a timely operation helped her survive a case considered extremely rare among children.

Due to the girl being very young and small for her age, there were doubts about her treatment but a medical team at Soliman Fakeeh Hospital, led by Dr. Salem Bazraah, a gastroenterology and herpetology/endoscopy consultant, conducted a life-saving endoscopic procedure of the bile ducts.

Doctors performed an endoscopy of the small intestine introducing a catheter with a drug which was injected directly into the bile ducts without surgical intervention.

Bazraah said that although such procedures are common in adults, they are rarely performed on young children owing to the small size of their internal organs especially the bile duct, which does not exceed 2mm in diameter at that age.

“This procedure was very difficult owing to the tiny size of the child’s bile ducts compared to the size of the endoscope used,” he said, adding that endoscopic procedures require highly skilled surgeons.

The procedure was conducted successfully and the girl was discharged from the hospital within 48 hours of the operation.