Preterm baby with heart defect gets new lease of life

Coimbatore: A city hospital has successfully performed a surgery on a baby boy weighing just 910g who was born preterm with a heart defect known as patent ductus arteriosus.
It is a condition where there is a persistent connection between the two blood vessels leaving the heart, leading to too much blood flow into the lungs. The surgery was performed in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) itself to avoid shifting, which could have led to complications.
Born to a couple from Andhra Pradesh at the PSG Hospitals in the city on the 25th week of pregnancy, many organs of the child were immature.
“Ductus arteriosus is a normal umbilical artery supplying oxygen-rich blood to the fetus. It usually closes itself within a few days of delivery,” says Dr Vinoth Doraisamy, senior consultant paediatric cardiologist at the hospital. “However, preterm babies are prone to incomplete closure of this artery and as a result too much blood flow into the lungs.”
The baby, who was in the NICU for a few weeks, had developed a lung infection. Even after a course of antibiotic therapy, the baby was dependent on the ventilator because of the patent ductus arteriosus.
“That’s when we decided to surgically close the connecting artery,” says Dr C Ananthanarayanan, senior consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the hospital. “But it was technically challenging to shift the baby to the operation theatre, which was on a different floor. The baby’s organ systems were so immature that shifting to a different floor could have led to hypothermia or low body temperature with serious consequences. The child’s lung was also in a bad state that it could not have withstood even minimal movement of tubes during the shifting. So, we arranged an operation theatre set-up in the NICU itself.”
The hospital sealed off the baby’s portion of the ICU cabin, and the surgeon had to operate the baby on the ICU bed, which couldn’t be turned, making it physically difficult. The hour-long procedure was uneventful. “The baby is slowly recovering,” says Dr Ananthanarayanan.