A minimally invasive fetal surgery for myelomeningocele (MMC) could spare children from a life of being bedridden or disabled, Taipei Chang Gung Memorial Hospital said in a statement.
Myelomeningocele, or open spina bifida, is a birth defect in which a fetus’ spine and spinal canal do not close before birth.
In 2021, then-29-year-old Lu (呂), whose first child was diagnosed with MMC in her 23rd week of pregnancy, faced the difficult choice of terminating the pregnancy or letting her child face lifetime paralysis, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology director Steven Shaw (蕭勝文) said at the hospital on Wednesday.
Photo: CNA
From 2020 to 2023, the hospital offered the procedure — fetoscopic spinal bifida repair — as an option for 15 pregnancies that had been diagnosed with MMC, but Lu was the only who opted to try it, Shaw said.
The baby was born at 32 weeks, weighing 2.3kg, and the child’s rehabilitation was officially completed at about one year of age, said Wang Chin-man (王錦滿), a professor of pediatric rehabilitation at Chang Gung University.
The girl, now four-and-a-half years old, requires no rehabilitation therapy and only need regular checkups, Wang said.
Spina bifida is a condition in which a baby’s spine does not form properly, Shaw said.
If not treated in time, the fluid surrounding the fetus can cause permanent damage to the nerves as the pregnancy progresses, he said.
That can lead to muscle weakness or paralysis below the affected area after birth, as well as loss of sensation, and, in severe cases, to excess fluid in the brain or parts of the brain being pushed out of place, he added.
Traditional open fetal surgeries require making a large, about 20cm, incision in the mother’s abdomen for a doctor to access the uterus and treat the fetus, which is highly risky for both the mother and the child, he said.
The minimally invasive fetoscopic spinal bifida repair, which was developed in Brazil, requires only three tiny incisions in the mother’s abdomen and uterus to repair the defect, Shaw said.
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