A baby girl weighing just 520 gm has become the tiniest in South Asia to survive a major abdominal surgery. The girl, born premature at 26 weeks of pregnancy, was operated upon as 12-day-old in Udaipur following progressive distension of her abdomen because of which she was unable to get the milk feed.
The surgery entails a very high mortality ranging between 60% and 80% and the chances of survival were less than 10% in the Udaipur case.
The baby, Jhanvi, was born in February this year to Umesh and Madanlal Arya, hailing from Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri district. She was conceived after 29 years of marriage by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) technique.
Paediatric surgeon Praveen Jhanwar and his team carried out the emergency abdominal surgery under general anaesthesia which lasted one-and-a-half hours.
The post-operative course was like a rollercoaster. There were several hurdles, infections and blood transfusions along the way and regular screening of heart and brain was performed to rule out any bleeding in brain.
Dr. Janged said Jhanvi's weight was now close to 2,110 gm and that her progress and clinical course in the neonatal intensive care unit was satisfactory.
