Doctors have used keyhole surgery to repair a baby’s spine while it was still in its mother’s womb in the first operation of its kind in the UK.Surgeons at King’s College Hospital in London performed the procedure on Sherrie Sharp and her son Jaxson, who has spina bifida, 27 weeks into the pregnancy.
Doctors diagnosed spina bifida after routine 20-week pregnancy scans showed Jaxson’s spine and spinal cord were not forming correctly.
The cord was bulging out of the foetus’s developing spine, which causes damage to crucial nerves and can potentially lead to paralysis, loss of sensation in the legs, and difficulty controlling the bladder and bowels.
While the surgery is not a cure, it cuts the likelihood of long-term health problems associated with spina bifida.
Sharp, 28, from Horsham in West Sussex, decided to undergo the pioneering procedure despite knowing there was a risk of her baby being delivered prematurely.
During the three-hour operation, surgeons put the spinal cord back in place and used a patch to cover it and prevent spinal fluid leaking out. Dr Marta Santorum-Perez, a consultant at the hospital’s Fetal Medicine Unit, said: “The foetus is very small and inside the womb, so obviously it’s a very delicate operation.”