Foetal surgery will become more common
Filed under: Baby health — Alan @ 5:39 am
Advances in laparoscopic surgery that allows surgeons to repair birth defects while the baby is still in the womb, scientists may also be able to deliver DNA and cells in the future to treat devastating genetic diseases such as sickle cell anaemia before the child is born.
This new field is called foetal surgery and is a growing part of material medicine according to paediatric surgeon Scott Adzick from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who is the medical director of the centre for Foetal Diagnosis and Treatment and also the surgeon in chief.
Adzick continued to state that the ability to detect birth defects before birth has let physicians offer extra prenatal care but due to the fact that many babies are too ill to be treated after they leave the womb scientists were forced to develop the field of foetal surgery.
He also stated that a large majority of the anomalies that are treated at the Children’s Hospital are rare and only seen once or twice a year, but with the advancement of the field it is possible that a wider group of conditions may be possible to treat before birth, benefiting many children.
In the future Adzick hopes to see advances in gene therapy, high tech procedures, innovative surgeries, and stem cell treatments that can all lead to new advances in the current standards of foetal therapy.
Open foetal surgery is the process of opening the abdomen of the mother along with the uterus that the foetus can be operated on. Two common forms of the surgery target babies that have lung mass defects and compression on the heart that can prevent the heart from developing.
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