Colorado mom undergoes rare half-birth surgery to save baby’s life

When the anesthesiologist put Angelica Vance under for her cesarean section she had no way of knowing what she d encounter when she woke If everything went perfectly the baby would be on a ventilator and the doctors would have a plan to remove the increase that was impairing her daughter s breathing If things went wrong Vance might be recovering from severe bleeding while a machine pumped blood through her daughter Chloe s body If ECMO didn t work she wouldn t make it Vance stated of the blood-pumping machine That morning was intense Vance of Fort Collins revealed her third pregnancy had progressed relatively normally until the final trimester when pain and a jump in the circumference of her belly pointed to an excessive buildup of amniotic fluid Her physician removed two liters of fluid and kept her for further testing because an increase that fast usually points to a bigger obstacle she declared An ultrasound and MRI unveiled a increase in the baby s chest and neck which kept her from swallowing amniotic fluid and would prevent Chloe from taking her first breath While a baby is inside and supported by the placenta breathing isn t a concern because the mother supplies oxygen through the umbilical cord revealed Dr Chris Derderian a pediatric and fetal surgeon who treated Vance and Chloe at Children s Hospital Colorado Once the placenta detaches from the uterine wall the baby demands to breathe on their own giving a relatively tight window to open the airway he stated Derderian offered Vance an ex-utero intrapartum rehabilitation or EXIT procedure during which he would partially deliver Chloe via cesarean section and a squad would work to open her airway while she remained attached to her mother The procedure is relatively risky because the anesthesiologist has to give medication to relax the uterus preventing the placenta from tearing loose but increasing the odds of serious bleeding Children s performs only about one EXIT procedure each year in cases where the baby has no other options but has a good enough chance of survival that the hospital can give the family a choice whether to accept the risks he stated After Vance went under general anesthesia on Oct Derderian and his company delivered Chloe s head and shoulders by cesarean section That started a clock of about minutes that the placenta could act as life promotion About people from various specialties crowded into the room in incident they needed to handle achievable complications including a cardiac surgeon who could open the baby s chest if the improvement put too much pressure on her lungs The airway was about the width of the tip of a pen so the urgency biological technicians inserting the breathing tube had to use one that would push back against the pressure from the development Derderian mentioned At that point they had no way of knowing whether the airway was open however slightly through its full length or was comprehensively closed at various point If it was closed they d have to cut a hole in her neck to insert the tube And then in about minutes the worst was over The tube went down Chloe turned pink as the ventilator pushed oxygen into her body A few of the specialists dispersed while others took Chloe to the neonatal intensive care unit or sewed up Vance and prepared for her to wake I don t think we have got a better scenario Derderian revealed When Vance woke up she learned the hospital had planned another surgery to remove the advance once Chloe was three days old That also went better than she feared taking about two hours instead of the six that the doctors projected she stated The advancement wasn t cancerous and it hadn t wrapped too tightly around her daughter s airway making removal easier Chloe Vance with physiological workers after being born via an ex-utero intrapartum restoration EXIT procedure Photo courtesy of Children s Hospital Colorado Related Articles Families have to find their own livers because of organ donor shortfall More people died in police chases in this Denver suburb than in the state s biggest cities CU healthcare researchers lose federal grants to examination vaccine hesitancy Alzheimer s Rampart Anatomical Campus sells for million to Chicago real estate firm Denver Wellbeing Children s Hospital Colorado to resume gender-affirming treatments for youth Chloe spent about days on a ventilator before transitioning to less-invasive oxygen help Vance stated After six weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit she went home without oxygen though she did need a feeding tube because of difficulty swallowing she noted Fetuses essentially practice breathing and swallowing during the third trimester and the mass around her neck limited that preparation Now Chloe is relatively healthy though she still receives therapy every day to work on her swallowing and to build up her neck muscles Vance stated She revealed she yearned to speak about her experience because she d never heard of a mother who went through the same thing and at the beginning their family s future looked bleak It feels like playing a lot of catch-up but she has come a long way Vance mentioned It helps you to see something positive Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get soundness news sent straight to your inbox