A 34-week-old fetus's brain abnormality has been corrected by doctors.
The American Heart Association announced the revolutionary technique in a press statement on Thursday, adding that it was performed as part of a clinical trial at Boston Children's Hospital and Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. The operation corrects the Galen vein abnormality in the brain.
According to the American Heart Association, the malformation is a rare prenatal condition in which arteries "bringing high-flow, high-pressure blood to the brain from the heart connect directly with one of the main collecting veins deep at the base of the brain, rather than capillaries that are necessary to slow blood flow and deliver oxygen to surrounding brain tissue."
The abnormality is frequently discovered on a prenatal ultrasound and identified with an MRI in the late second or third trimester of pregnancy. If a patient is not treated, he or she may develop fatal illnesses such as heart failure or pulmonary hypertension.
"In our ongoing clinical trial, we are using ultrasound-guided transuterine embolisation to address the vein of Galen malformation before birth, and in our first treated case, we were thrilled to see that the aggressive decline usually seen after birth simply did not appear," said Darren B. Orbach, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of Boston Children's Hospital in a statement.
"We are pleased to report that the infant is progressing remarkably well at six weeks, on no medications, eating normally, gaining weight, and returning home." "There are no signs of any negative brain effects," he noted.
Orbach is also an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and contributed to studies on the procedure published in the peer-reviewed journal Stroke by the American Stroke Association. According to the study, the infant patient, identified as Denver Coleman by CNN, was born two days after the surgery weighing 4 pounds and 1 ounce.
"I heard her cry for the first time, and I can't even describe how I felt at that moment." "It was just the most beautiful moment, you know, being able to hold her, gaze up at her, and then hear her cry," Kenyatta Coleman of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told the site.
According to the publication, the kid continues to exhibit no need for more intervention and is not on any heart failure medication.
