Despite cutting-edge technologies being available, such surgeries are not easy to perform, say doctors
In what is being considered a huge breakthrough for medical science in India, doctors at a hospital in Hyderabad have performed a heart surgery on a foetus.
The procedure was performed on a 25-year-old woman who was admitted at Care hospital in the 27th week of pregnancy.
“The baby in the womb of 25-year-old Sirisha was diagnosed with severe obstruction in the aortic valve, which was resulting in failure of pumping of left ventricle to the body. It was also showing further damage in the form of leakage of mitral valve and shrinkage of left sided heart chambers,” says an IANS report. It has also been reported that the doctors were not successful in their first attempt in 26th week due to unfavourable fetal position.
Only some are fortunate enough
While several babies die because their heart problems either go undiscovered, or they're diagnosed too late, only a few lucky ones get diagnosed in time and have access to such surgeries. The earliest reported human fetal cardiac therapy of any kind was in 1975, says a research report in journal Medscape. The first open in utero cardiac procedure was reported a decade later, in 1986, with a pacemaker placement for complete heart block.
In November 2013, a 25-week-old foetus had undergone a rare heart surgery in US’ California. "To simulate the minimally invasive procedure, doctors first practiced on a grape that was cast in a mold of jello. Per the Los Angeles Times, the jello replicated the mother's body, and the grape was a stand-in for the fetus itself," the Huffington Post had reported.
The doctors say that it is not easy to perform such a surgery. Even with state-of-the-art ultrasound images displayed on a big screen, it's hard for the doctors to see exactly where the balloon (inserted in the womb with the purpose of opening the aortic valve) is. "It's like trying to find a golf ball in a snowstorm," says Dr Wayne Tworetzky, a Boston-based cardiologist, in a report by US-based non-profit NPR.
Baby's heart corrected with help of 3-D printing
Surgeons at another US hospital had recently used the technology along with MRI scan data to create a 3-D printed replica of the baby's heart before treating a two-week-old baby with a congenital heart defect, the Connecticut NewsTimes reports. The printed version served as a practice model for surgeons working to treat the newborn, allowing them to spot irregularities in the child's heart before beginning surgery. Without this, he baby's heart would have to be stopped and examined after opening the child up, says a report by Toronto Sun.
Tinkering in the womb: the future of fetal surgery
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