City doctors operate on fetus inside womb
May 8, 2009
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Megan Ogilvie
HEALTH REPORTER
Toronto doctors have, for the first time in Canada, performed a life-saving heart procedure on a baby while the infant was still inside her mother's womb.
A team of doctors from the Hospital for Sick Children and Mount Sinai Hospital performed the experimental procedure to widen the baby's aortic valve on March 19. The procedure, which has only been tried in a few centres worldwide, can only be done before a baby is born.
Océane McKenzie, who was delivered on April 15, will soon be able to go home.
"She is going to get spoiled," her mom, Vicki, told the Star this morning. "She's the first girl in our family."
McKenzie, who has two young sons, found out about her baby's critical heart condition during a routine ultrasound 30 weeks into her pregnancy.
The condition, called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, leads to a severe narrowing of the main outlet of the heart's left ventricle. Babies born with the condition often die, despite undergoing major heart surgeries. Just 65 per cent of children with the condition will live to their 10th birthday.
Dr. Edgar Jaeggi, head of the fetal cardiac program at Sick Kids, said there is a critical period of time in which to perform the corrective surgery on an unborn baby. McKenzie, who lives near Ottawa, was referred to the Toronto doctors at just the right time, he said.
To do the procedure, doctors inserted a needle into McKenzie's abdomen, through her uterus, and into the left ventricle of the baby's heart. The surgeons guided a wire to the opening of the aorta, where they then deployed a balloon to widen the aortic valve.
Four weeks later, doctors delivered Océane. Jaeggi said it was critical for the baby girl's development to have the additional four weeks in her mother's womb.
Océane has since had two additional surgeries to further open her aortic valve. Jaeggi said the baby girl will soon be able to go home.
"Her heart," he said, "now looks like a normal heart."
Read more about this innovative procedure in the Saturday Star
thestar.com
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