At her 20-week scan, Maisie Savage from London was devastated to learn that her unborn baby had a rare condition (Gastroschisis) in which the intestines develop outside the abdomen. Babies with the condition often require weeks or months of intensive care after birth, and some do not survive.
But thanks to pioneering foetal surgery in Texas, her son Theo was born naturally at full term and, at five months old, is “thriving” – having started life as a “completely normal baby”.
At 26 weeks’ gestation, surgeons used keyhole techniques to move Theo’s intestines back inside his abdomen while he was still in the womb. Maisie then continued her pregnancy until his full-term birth.
Theo was the third baby treated as part of a clinical trial led by Dr Michael Belfort and his team of paediatric surgeons at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women. Encouraged by the results, they hope to make the procedure more widely available. Maisie travelled to Houston for the operation and remained there until Theo was born.
“The inside of the uterus is now a new surgical space for innovation,” Dr Michael Belfort said. A specialist in maternal-foetal medicine and foetal intervention, Belfort has overseen hundreds of foetal operations, including pioneering surgery for spina bifida, and believes similar techniques could one day help babies with heart or lung conditions.
Theo’s story illustrates the hope that new advances in medicine can make life-changing improvements possible, even in the face of a hard-to-treat diagnosis. It is also a marvellous example of real healthcare – recognising and treating the child in the womb as a patient before birth as much as after it.