Revolutionary op that treats spina bifida in the womb ..and it could be available here soon
BREAKTHROUGH TO END BABY HELL OF BRITISH MUMS-TO-BE
THIS extraordinary picture reveals how an unborn baby’s future health can be changed for ever – by surgery while still inside the womb.
And the incredible operation – until recently only performed abroad – is about to be rolled out by UK hospitals.
It gives hope to pregnant mothers carrying babies with brain and spinal conditions such as spina bifida.
Costing around €11,000, the procedure involves lifting the womb entirely out of the abdomen and creating a small hole in the uterus wall to operate on the foetus inside the amniotic sac.
DELICATE
In the case of a spina bifida baby, delicate surgery – involving a team of more than 20 medics – sees exposed nerves that will cause agonising symptoms after birth pushed back inside the delicate membrane surrounding the spinal cord.
The unborn child has to be kept face down in the amniotic fluid throughout the op to avoid it breathing air and being born prematurely. Until now, the NHS has had to send mums-to-be needing this groundbreaking surgery to foreign hospitals, with all the worry and anxiety that entails.
But for the past two years, experts at University College London Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital have been travelling abroad to train in the procedure. And the very first op on British soil took place in secret earlier this year. Later this week, a BBC2 Horizon documentary presented by BAFTA nominated Cold Feet actress Ruth Madeley, a spina bifida sufferer, follows UK doctors training in Belgium where the surgery has been available for more than five years.
Ruth, 31 – who also won acclaim for her role as a disabled mum in 2015 BBC Three drama Don’t Take My Baby – shadows British neurosurgeon Dominic Thompson as he and European expert Prof Jan Deprest carry out an operation on a 27-year-old pregnant mother at a teaching hospital in Leuven.
Six months on, wheelchair user Ruth meets baby Ayesha, saved from a life of
suffering the worst symptoms of spina bifida. She says: “I can’t believe the last time I saw her was through a hole in her mummy’s tummy.
“I set out to discover how much medical science has moved on since I was born. I have no doubt this incredible foetal surgery is changing lives.”
Prof Deprest, who leads one of only four centres in Europe that perform the operation and works two days a week at UCL, confirms that since filming the documentary surgeons have now carried out the procedure in Britain.
He says: “We have already, with this team from London and Leuven, moved into clinical practice and performed the operation in the UK.”
One in every thousand pregnancies in Britain results in a child with a spine or brain defect. And more than 200 babies are born with spina bifida every year in the UK, according to charity Shine.
It is believed more than 95 per cent of women who discover their child will be born with spina bifida take the difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy.
However, the surgery that can change all that does not come without risk. Dr Ross Welch, a former president of the International Foetal Medicine and Surgery Society, said: “Operating on babies who are supposed to be immersed in water (in the amniotic sac) is a difficult process and that is why it is so important to have this carefully choreographed team approach.”
In 2013, British mum Gina Beddoe, from Plymouth, was the first to be offered the surgery abroad after discovering her unborn baby had spina bifida at her 20-week scan.
NHS England agreed to foot the €10,455 bill for the operation at Leuven Teaching Hospital in Belgium.
The surgery was a success, and baby Frankie Lavis was born in August 2013.
Dr Welch added: “It’s fantastic to see the changes in children who have had the procedure. You’d expect them to be doubly incontinent and unable to walk, but I’ve got videos of Frankie walking.
“If you ask women whose children have undergone this operation, they would talk about the life-changing nature of it for far longer than I could.”
It’s fantastic to see the changes in children who have had this procedure
DR ROSS WELCH ON THE GROUNDBREAKING OP