Hyderabad (Telangana): Police in Hyderabad booked a doctor and a private hospital on the parents' complaint on Friday after their newborn suffered nose necrosis allegedly due to excessive phototherapy while the baby was kept in the ICU for several days for breathing issues.
Imran Khan and Harshannussa Khan of Kalapattar area of Old City became parents 13 years after marriage as the mother delivered a baby boy on June 8 at a hospital in Hyderguda. Doctors put the baby in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) the same day as it was having trouble breathing. After ten days, the parents found that the nose of the child had "turned black".
Doctors, as per the parents, said that an infection in the nose during the baby's stay in the NICU had led to the discolouration, and prescribed an ointment worth Rs 18,000. A few days later, the part of the nose that had discoloured fell off but the doctors gave a "careless answer" when the parents, shocked to see their child, asked about it.
The child had allegedly been put under phototherapy, a treatment with a special type of light used to treat jaundice among newborns. Excessive phototherapy, however, in rare instances, can lead to necrosis (death of body tissue).
The aggrieved parents told the police that doctors said the boy had an "infection in his nose". Narayanaguda police registered a case based on the complaint by the parents. According to the parents, the hospital charged Rs 35,000 per day for the baby's treatment. The couple claimed they had to borrow money to pay the final bill of Rs 5 lakh. They said that the child had a fever and a runny nose and the medical staff did not treat the baby properly.
Shockingly, the hospital authorities said that they will "try to fix the nose once the baby is a year old". "If they want to do complete plastic surgery, it will be possible after 10 years," the hospital officials said.
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