Baby discharged after lowest-weight surgery
A PREMATURE baby was discharged from Shanghai’s Xinhua Hospital yesterday after doctors used a thoracoscope as small as a grain of rice to correct a congenital defect.
The boy, delivered at just 31 weeks, weighed one kilogram and was less than 30 centimeters long. He suffered frequent choking after birth and was suspected to have esophageal atresia, a defect where the upper and lower parts of the organ do not connect. This meant milk was unable to pass to the stomach properly.
The parents brought their son from Jiangsu Province to Xinhua Hospital, where experts immediately conducted diagnosis and treatment.
Dr Wang Jun said esophageal atresia was a serious congenital deformity in the digestive system with an incidence of one in every 3,500 to 5,000 births. Children with the defect usually had other congenital defects.
“Surgery is the major treatment for such a defect, however birth weight and the impact of other defects are two criteria. The survival for mature children with no serious heart problems is over 95 percent, while mortality rises to 40 to 50 percent for children weighing less than 1,500 grams,” Wang said. “Due to the baby’s condition, we had to conduct surgery as soon as possible. It was challenging due to his low weight.”
Doctors conducted the surgery on December 4.
For mature children, minimally invasive surgery using a thoracoscope is the usual solution. Children of very low weight usually have to receive cut-open surgery or more than one surgery to reduce risk.
“The previous world record for the lowest weight of children with esophageal atresia was 1,025 grams.”