Doctor saves asthmatic toddler’s life onboard plane

Khurshid Guru, who is the director of robotic surgery at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in New York, is no stranger to innovative gadgets.

He turned an adult inhaler into a pediatric nebulizer using a cup, water bottle, some tape and an oxygen mask and tank. The child didn’t have his medication, was not responding to the on-flight oxygen and needed treatment. When Guru saw the child’s oxygen level was dipping down to a dangerously low levels, he knew he needed to do something quickly. The doctor says by coincidence, he’s provided someone medical care on the last three flights he’s been on.

When a 2-year-old child suffered an asthma attack during a flight, thousands of feet in the air, his parents didn’t know what to do since they had accidentally packed his medication in their check-in luggage.

Dr. Khurshid Guru, equipped with just a plastic bottle and cup, managed to save the life of an asthmatic child while on a transatlantic flight. I think the cold and popping of the ears and crying. Guru, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir, came up with a jerry-rigged device similar to a nebulizer that would deliver both oxygen and asthma medication to the crying child.

He hooked up the adult inhaler to a hole in the bottle and added oxygen through another opening he had made so the toddler could inhale both simultaneously. As the bottle went near to the child’s face, he pushed it away. After the very unusual treatment, the child’s oxygen level was at a normal level, he said.

A plane traveling from Spain to the United States was about mid-way across the Atlantic when an urgent announcement was made, calling for a physician – an asthmatic 2-year-old was struggling to breathe.

Dr Guru said he chose to share the story to remind parents of kids suffering from asthma the importance of keeping their medication at hand at all times.

“It’s a personal wake up call for families to make sure you carry these small things”, Guru told WGRZ. “Nonetheless, we are deeply appreciative of the doctor’s efforts and for his actions assisting one of our customers”.