Pune: Born at 25 weeks, premature baby beats odds to survive

PUNE: A baby born prematurely at 25 weeks went home recently after braving 99 days of intensive care at Jupiter hospital in the city.

"The condition of the baby boy born at 25 weeks of pregnancy weighing 550 gram was extremely critical because of the extreme prematurity and low birth weight," said hospital's consultant neonatalogist and paediatric intensivist Shrinivas Tambe.

A 46-year-old woman had given birth to twins through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) at a private hospital in the city. One of the babies did not survive. The second baby was put onto life support for severe breathing difficulty due to the condition called ‘respiratory distress syndrome’.

The baby was immediately transferred to Jupiter Hospital in an incubator. The baby was kept on life support for the first 11 days and subsequently shifted to different respiratory support for a month. Special catheters were introduced through the baby’s umbilical cord to give nutrition and monitor baby’s blood pressure.

During the treatment, the baby had an episode of severe infection which was immediately picked up by the full-time doctors at the hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and was treated aggressively to prevent complications. Baby also required blood transfusions for anaemia.

“It is challenging for medical and nursing staff to look after babies born at 25 weeks. Babies born at this gestation have very immature organs like lungs, intestine, brain and skin," Tambe said.

Hospital's paediatrician Sachin Admuthe said, "Another challenge in babies born at this gestation is ‘bleeding in the brain, chronic lung disease and retinopathy of prematurity’. We were able to prevent these complications because of ventilation strategy and amount of oxygen supplied to the baby." After the 99 days of battle, the baby was successfully discharged on the 100th at 1.67kg body weight.