Flying back from ERUS15 had to design a nebuliser for a 2 yr old asthmatic over the atlantic. Thank God kid did well! pic.twitter.com/fQOJ2Ac0EA — Khurshid A. Guru (@KhurshidGuru) September 18, 2015

A quick-thinking doctor managed to scrape together an inhaler for a toddler who was struggling to breathe on a flight.

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.

Guru, a director of Robotic Surgery at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, was alerted to a two-year-old boy who was crying and struggling to breathe about three or four hours into a flight from Spain to the US.

The tot’s oxygen levels were dropping to a dangerously low level, so Guru knew he needed to act quickly.




Although the plane did have an adult inhaler on board, the child was too young to understand exactly how it worked.

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Understandably, people were pretty impressed with his rapid response.

@KhurshidGuru that is one of the coolest things I've seen. Well done! #graceunderpressure — John Walton (@john_w5) September 18, 2015

Guru usually works with sophisticated technology to treat patients, but he rigged together the bottle and cup to work as an inhaler to deliver both oxygen and asthma medication to the child.

He told ABC news: ‘The child had developed a cold, I think the cold and popping of the ears and crying… He got worse.

‘I got a water cup and made a hole in the bottle and focused it to his face… told [the parents] to keep it there.

‘Within about half an hour and two treatments he was sounding much better.’

Air Canada, the airline on which the incident took place, thanked the surgeon for his quick thinking.

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