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Hospital Clinic

EP had that resolve a serious obstruction of the aortic valve. It is the first operation of its kind made in Catalonia. The child was born with two well developed ventricles and a disease with favourable prognosis. Doctors of the Hospital Clinic and Sant Joan de Deu de Barcelona have intervened successfully to a fetus inside the mother’s womb to solve a serious obstruction of the aortic valve, which endangered his life through a catheterization. According to hospital sources, it’s the first operation of its kind carried out in Catalonia, a pathology that occurs in one of every 5,000 fetuses and which leads to his death in the womb or a life with heart complications and a very low life expectancy in the majority of cases.

The fetus, of 26 weeks of gestation, suffered a critical aortic stenosis which prevented the adequate development of the left ventricle of the heart and that was detected through an ultrasound. The intervention consisted in practice of a catheterization on the fetus inside the womb of the mother. Specialists anestesiaron the fetus, was placed in a suitable position and went through the abdominal wall of the mother until reaching the patient’s heart with a needle. The cardiologist introduced a catheter with a balloon which swelled up in the blocked aortic valve point to unblock it, preventing the atrophy that would have suffered the heart and favoring the normal growth of the left ventricle during pregnancy. The baby is already seven months the director of the area of the heart of the Hospital of Sant Joan de Deu, Jose Caffarena, explained the intervention involves a rescue of a practically lost which had been born with a nearly useless left ventricle and heart that had been devoted to the child to a pathology of high gravity. According to Caffarena, the child has been born with two well developed ventricles and a disease that needed to be treated, has a prognosis favorable and with a quality of life similar to that of the normal population.

The baby, named David and has currently seven months, was born at term and spent a month in the unit of neonates of Sant Joan de Deu where underwent another intervention, and currently is a child with a heart defect, but it can make a normal life, said Carlos Mortera, cardiologist at the Hospital of Sant Joan de Deu. Until recently, fetuses that presented a serious obstruction of the aortic valve could not be operated and parents only offered the option to terminate the pregnancy or an expectation of post-natal life very hard, with a significant risk of death, poor quality of life and many sequels, according to Dr. Josep Maria Martinez, of the Hospital Clinic. Source of the news: perform a catheterization to a fetus in the womb