Coimbatore :

A nine-day-old girl, born prematurely with a heart defect and weighing only 750g at birth, went under the knife here to correct a congenital heart defect.

Doctors in the neonatal intensive care unit at Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital (KMCH) found that the baby was having trouble while breathing. “We realised that the ductus arteriosis, a blood vessel connecting the aorta and pulmonary artery in the baby’s heart, was still open. It normally usually closes after birth,” a doctor who was part of the operating team said.

The child’s mother Dhanalakshmi, from Erode, admitted to an Erode hospital on December 21, gave birth just 25 weeks into her pregnancy. Doctors said the baby’s condition, patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), was probably caused because she was born prematurely. Even though PDA is a congenital, premature children are more likely to have the disorder, the doctors said.

Doctors at KMCH decided to surgically close the ductus arteriosus, despite the fact that the procedure would be challenging because of the baby’s low birth weight.

A team of doctors led by cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon Dr S Balasundaram performed the 30-minute surgery on December 30. The baby remains under observation in the neonatal ICU but has shown signs of progress and is able to breathe freely, doctors said. She now weighs close to 1.4kg. “It was a very delicate procedure because the heart and blood vessels are tiny and identifying the right vessel and stapling it is not easy,” senior cardiologist Dr A R Srinivas said. “Another challenge was administering anesthesia, which causes hemodynamic changes (changes in the pattern of blood flow), and could make the baby very sick during the operation.”

“We opened up the baby’s chest from the back, identified the right vessel and stapled it twice,” he said.

Around four babies are born with PDA in the city each year. One of them, Dhanam, in November became the youngest baby in the country to receive a stent implant, doctors said.

Dr Srinivas said the incidence of PDA in premature babies with a birth weight of 1kg is around 45%. Doctors can in more than 90% of the cases close the vessel by administration of anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and indomethacin. “However, in the remaining 10% it has to be closed surgically,” he said.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Coimbatore / by Pratiksha Ramkumar, TNN / February 04th, 2015