Spanish doctors have announced themselves as the brain behind the world’s first successful operation on fixing a fetus’ blocked bronchial tube
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The operation, which was carried out in 2010 by staff from Barcelona’s Clinic and Sant Joan de Deu hospitals, had lasted just 30 minutes but was very delicate as it was carried out on a 26-week-old fetus weighing just 800 grams (28 ounces).
The fetus, baby Alaitz, was suffering from a bronchial atresia, a relatively common condition which affects one fetus in 10,000.
Doctors from two Barcelona hospitals, Clinic and Joan de Deu, had to introduce an endoscopy through the fetus’ mouth to connect the right bronchi with the central airways in a procedure done in late 2010 that was unveiled Tuesday.
The head of the maternal-fetal medicine department at Hospital clinic, Eduard Gratacos, said “It is the first time in the world that this has been achieved. It is the first time it has been tried and it turned out well.”
Doctor Gratacos added that “It is an extremely delicate operation since it is carried out near the heart on tissues as thin as cigarette paper. But without this fetal therapy, the baby would not have survived.”
Eleven weeks after the pioneering surgery was carried out, baby Alaitz which means “joy” in the Basque language, was born weighing 2.5 kilogrammes (5.5 pounds).
“She is completely normal. She wakes up happy, she laughs if she is pleased, she cries if she is hungry,” the baby’s 33-year-old mother, Monica Corominas, told a news conference at the Hospital Clinic as Alaitz, who is now 16-months-old, played nearby under the watch of her father Marco.
“It was the only option. We either tried it or put an end to the pregnancy.”
The two Barcelona hospitals are one of the five largest centers in the world for fetal surgery. They deal with 200 cases of fetal pathology per year.
