Pioneering surgeons took out a woman’s entire womb to treat her unborn baby’s spina bifida in a medical breakthrough.
The groundbreaking operation was devised by a team of innovative medics in Texas, and it can improve the lives of children born with a condition that could leave them partially paralyzed.
During the procedure surgeons lit up the womb, giving it a glowing appearance, and once the uterus was lifted out of the expectant mother, it was drained of amniotic fluid that can ravage a gap in the spinal nerve tissue.
The team that carried out the surgery is publishing their work, providing hope to the hundreds of mothers who give birth to a child with spina bifida each year.
Pictured is a womb that doctors operated on in Texas to treat a fetus’s spina bifida. Surgeons lit up the womb, which gave it a glowing appearance in the dark operating room
Twenty-eight year-old Lexi Royer (right) had the surgery last month. She is pictured here with her husband Joshuwa, a firefighter and emergency med tech
Lexi Royer, a 28-year-old hairdresser, underwent the surgery last month when her baby was 24 weeks.
Doctors initially offered her an abortion, and they warned her that her child would likely have brain damage, require feeding tubes and need a wheelchair.
Speaking for the first time since undergoing the operation, she told the New York Times: ‘It’s such a relief to move forward.’
‘I can’t imagine going on further in the pregnancy not knowing every day what damage is being done and if he’s getting worse.’
Twenty-eight of the surgeries performed last month on Royer’s womb have been performed. Each time, the fetus has lived
Ultrasounds taken since the operation have shown the baby is making good progress and is able to move his ankles and feet. Royer is due to give birth January 14.
Dr Michael Belfort, from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston was behind the procedure. There have been 28 of the operations so far, and all have been successful. Only a few of the babies have had to have brain shunts.
During the procedure doctors remove a pregnant woman’s entire womb by cutting a hole in her abdomen.
Two slits are then made in the womb. They allow surgeons to use their tools and give them space to insert a live camera that records the inside of the womb.
Carbon dioxide is then pumped inside, offering the medics greater space to work.
Surgeons are then able to use skin from elsewhere to cover up the baby’s exposed spinal cord, before placing the womb back inside the woman.
To develop the procedure Dr Belfort and a colleague spent two years practicing on sheep and a rubber ball with a doll inside wrapped in chicken skin to mimic the defect patients with spina bifida have.
Their work is now being published in the journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Dr Belfort is training colleagues at Stanford University to do the procedure. But some doctors are warning that pumping carbon dioxide into the womb during the surgery might damage the baby and cause neurological problems for the child later in life.