Posted on 02/02/2008 3:24:56 AM PST by canuck_conservative
EDMONTON -- Two teams of surgeons in Edmonton delivered a baby while operating on the mother for a life-threatening heart rupture last month.
The 36-year-old woman -- who was 35 weeks pregnant -- was airlifted from the Alberta city of Grande Prairie on Jan. 24 with a ruptured aorta - a condition that is fatal 40 per cent of the time without surgery within 48 hours.
Grande Prairie is about 460 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
She was taken immediately into an operating room at the University of Alberta while a obstetrical team raced from the nearby Royal Alexandra hospital to save her child.
In what doctors are calling an extremely rare tandem-surgery procedure, the obstetrical team delivered the child by caesarean section while cardiac surgeons performed open-heart surgery to save the mother's life.
The work took hours and the two patients -- fragile but stable -- weren't wheeled out of the operating room until the next day. Mother and child are said to be doing well, and they're expected to return home today.
The operations were made especially difficult by the need to lower the mother's body temperature and stop her heart in preparation for surgery - while her baby was still linked to her bloodstream.
The mother is expected to attend a news conference today in Edmonton with Dr. Rod MacArthur, the cardiovascular surgeon who performed the complex aortic surgery, and Dr. Billy Wong, the obstetrician who delivered the baby.
Cardiac operations on infants are rare but not unheard-of. In another groundbreaking case, in 1987 Jessica Diggens of Calgary became the first Canadian infant to survive a heart transplant, and only the seventh infant heart-transplant patient in the world. At 10 weeks of age, Diggens received the heart of a Mexican baby boy who was born brain-dead.
And in December 2005, Xander Dolski was diagnosed with a malformed heart when his mother was 20 weeks pregnant. Xander was delivered by caesarean section in Edmonton and, four hours later, became the youngest ever Canadian to receive a heart transplant.
Heart surgery on children is now relatively common in Canada and around the world -- but this country's record is not unblemished. In 1994, all pediatric surgeries at Winnipeg's Children's Hospital were stopped after 12 babies died following cardiac surgery there in the first 10 months of that year.
Boy, you don’t read a story like this every day.
She was being STORKED!
You sure don't, and for more than one reason. Take this quote,to save her child.
And this one: ...while her baby was still linked to her bloodstream.
Imagine that, two admissions in one news article that a preborn is a child/baby, not a tissue blob. Wonder if the reporter still has a job this morning?
That would make a great Movie of the Week.
Imagine trying to get that claim past Blue Cross
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