The first of its kind in the world… Successful surgery on a fetus’s brain inside its mother’s womb – Watana News

2023-06-16 18:34:43

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June 16, 2023

Watan Al-Youm: French doctors performed an operation in a Parisian hospital for a fetus with a serious brain deformity while it was still in its mother’s womb, the first of its kind in the world. The operation was a success, according to what was reported by the Paris Hospital Authority on Friday.
A statement by the authority, which includes the most prominent public hospitals in the “Ile-de-France” region, stated that in September of last year, a congenital malformation known as “Galenius malformation” was diagnosed in a fetus in its mother’s womb, causing heart failure and stroke-like symptoms. days after giving birth.
Surgeons at the Parisian Necker Hospital carried out this operation, which was first reported by Le Parisien newspaper.
This is not the first time that a child has been operated on in his mother’s womb, as many such operations have already been performed in recent years, especially for spinal cord deformities.
But the method of intervention that took place at Necker Hospital, which directly targeted the brain of the fetus, which was suffering from a deformity in the vein of Galenus, a cerebral blood vessel, which often leads to the death of the infant, was the first of its kind.
The surgery involves high risks which have been made clear to the parents, in view of the real certainty of serious or fatal consequences for the child if the deformity remains untreated.
The peculiarity of the operation also lies in its less invasive nature: “A delicate catheter was placed in the vein of Galenus, through the skin and uterus of the mother, and then through the skull of the fetus,” according to the statement of the Paris Hospital Authority.
Last March, surgeons in the United States performed a similar operation in a Boston hospital, which was successful.
According to specialized researchers, “this approach represents a quantum leap” in the face of this type of deformity, noting that such an operation makes it possible to intervene at an early stage and before irreversible complications occur.