Surgeons have for the first time performed a ground-breaking neurosurgical intervention on a foetus in utero in the US.
During a 30-week ultrasound on a baby girl, doctors discovered she had a vein of Galen malformation – a rare blood vessel abnormality inside the brain.
The baby’s heart was struggling and the malformation was getting dangerously large and so a decision to intervene was made.
During week 34 of the pregnancy, surgeons from the Boston Children's Hospital and the Brigham and Women's Hospital repaired her malformation while she was still in-utero, using ultrasound guidance and tiny coils that were placed directly into the abnormal blood vessels to stop blood flow.
Dr Darren Orbach, a Boston Children's Hospital physician, told WBZ-TV: "The best part was when she was born, just seeing her in the NICU be fine and, you know, we would all sort of look at each other and pinch ourselves.
"We were not sure when it was okay to celebrate because you just don't see that with these babies. So that was really the moment that we knew that all was going to be great."
The baby and her mother are both doing well.
The procedure was part of an FDA-approved clinical trial.
