Documentaries

How a new series showcases pioneering procedures on the tiniest of patients

The professionals work of medical across the country never fails to inspire. And this week C4 is turning the spotlight on a specialist team who perform life-saving operations on unborn babies in the womb.

Filmed over the past year, Baby Surgeons: Delivering Miracles follows clinical lead Professor Basky Thilaganathan and his colleagues in the Fetal Medicine Unit at London’s St George’s Hospital as they help the world’s smallest patients with pioneering treatments.

Here, Professor Thilaganathan tells TV Times what we can expect from the three-part series…

How did you find having cameras on your wards? Was it a strange experience? It was very strange at first. We’ve had the 24 Hours in A&E camera crew here for years and everyone down in A&E told us we’d soon get used to it, which is exactly what happened. We had to stop filming for a few weeks when lockdown first started, however, but not for long. Births don’t stop for anything!

Did you feel extra pressure when the cameras were rolling? We’re always really focused during operations, so that part wasn’t really an issue. But it was tricky when you’re trying to break news to parents in a calm, gentle and informative manner. They didn’t film anyone who didn’t agree to be filmed and always prepared them beforehand, but those moments could be quite sensitive.

Can you tell us about any of the cases featured in episode one? We operate on a lady called Becky, whose baby had a tumour that was stopping its lungs developing and causing the heart to fail. We decided the best course of action was a high-power laser that would cut the tumour’s blood supply but, with Becky 19 weeks pregnant, it was a high-risk operation. The baby’s chest was three or four centimetres in size, so if we’d missed by a millimetre there was a risk that the heart could have stopped. What size is the smallest unborn baby you have operated on? The earliest we can put in fetal shunts is about 14 weeks. At that stage, a baby weighs about 100 grams – the same as a Mars bar.

What are the biggest joys and challenges of your job? The feeling of helping a mother or a couple is absolutely priceless, but that’s always balanced by the cases where we can’t change the outcome, which are very sad.

Do some cases stay with you? Yes, sometimes you find yourself still up in the small hours thinking about cases that didn’t end as you’d hoped they would. We did reflect more than usual doing this, because the film crew asked questions after each case, which I think was a positive thing. You can either feel sad about things or learn lessons and make sure you minimise the risks for the future.

SEAN MARLAND