Baby treated for rare birth defect at Chennai hospital

Infant’s organs developed outside the body

A baby born with a rare condition was successfully treated at a city hospital recently.

A pregnant woman from Andhra Pradesh was referred to the Rainbow Children’s Hospital.

An antenatal scan revealed that some of the baby’s internal organs were outside the body in a large sac, a condition called omphalocele. Normally, such a pregnancy would be terminated since the associated cardiac, lung and genetic problems would lower the child’s survival rate.

But since the parents decided against it, the woman was shifted to Rainbow Children’s Hospital as her term was about to end. The baby was delivered through a Caesarean section by a team of doctors and then shifted to the neonatal intensive care unit.

The baby was stabilised for a day and then taken into surgery. Surgeons opened the sac containing the liver and intestine and pushed the organs back into the abdominal cavity.

10-day procedure

The liver was kept in a temporary artificial (silo) bag and over a period of 10 days the organ was pushed into the abdominal cavity slowly. When the liver was fully inside, the abdominal cavity was surgically closed.

The infant was on ventilator support throughout the procedure.

The expert team was led by paediatric and neonatal surgeon G. Moorthy, along with urologist and paediatric surgeon Senthil Ganesh, surgeon M. Raghul, lead consultant neonatology Rahul Yadav and senior consultant of obstetrics and gynaecology Vidhya Moorthy. The baby was discharged after 40 days and was doing well, hospital authorities said.