Doctors at the Raja Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar (RSRM) Maternity Hospital in Royapuram here delivered a woman of triplets of which one was an abnormal foetus.
The blood supply to this foetus was cut in the 19th week of pregnancy.
The woman, belonging to Tiruvallur, was admitted to the hospital's Foetal Care Clinic in the 19th week of pregnancy after a review of her pregnancy history.
Advanced tests at MediScan, an organisation that specialises in foetal care, found that the one foetus had not developed brain and heart and was receiving blood supply from one of the normal foetuses.
“The condition is called monochorionic triplets, in which the three foetuses were sharing a single placenta. There was a possibility that the normal foetus which was supplying blood would probably have cardiac failure and the pregnancy could be lost,” said S.Suresh, Managing Director of MediScan. “In a rare procedure we prevented blood supply to the abnormal foetus, without disturbing the development of the other foetuses.”
The procedures, which cost Rs.70,000 were done free of cost through Foetal Care Research Foundation, a non-governmental arm of MediScan.
Throughout the pregnancy, the woman was an inpatient in RSRM Hospital. On Thursday, after 36 weeks of pregnancy, she was delivered of twin girls and the abnormal foetus through Caesarean section at the Foetal Care Clinic, which is headed by K. Hephzibah.
According to her the woman's condition is found in one in 35,000 pregnancies.
