US doctors perform first-ever critical brain surgery on an unborn baby

New York: A team of doctors in the US were able to perform a life-saving surgery on a baby in womb at 34 weeks of pregnancy.

The groundbreaking surgery saw the doctors correcting a blood vessel abnormality inside the baby’s brain which if untreated could lead to serious complications including death, according to CNN.

The rare brain condition ‘Venus of Galen malformation’ occurs when the blood vessel carrying blood from the brain to the heart develops incorrectly.

The malformation causes heavy blood stressing in the veins and heart, giving rise to ‘a cascade of health problems’, according to the report.

Baby Denver was getting on well inside her mom when an ultrasound scanning revealed that her heart was struggling as the malformation was ‘getting dangerously large’, according to report.

Dr. Darren Orbach, a radiologist at Boston Children's Hospital and expert in treating VOGM said that ‘Tremendous brain injuries and immediate heart failure after birth are the two big challenges.’

Doctors at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Boston Children's Hospital repaired the malformation using ultrasound guidance.

The process involved a needle similar to the ones used for amniocentesis, and alongside tiny coils were placed directly into the abnormal blood vessels to stop blood flow

Dr. Darren Orbach said usually infants with this condition are treated after their birth using ‘a catheter to insert tiny coils to slow down blood flow’, which he said often happen belatedly.

‘50 to 60 percent of all babies with this condition will get very sick immediately. And for those, it looks like there's about a 40 percent mortality rate. About half of infants that survive experience severe neurological and cognitive issues,’ Orbach was quoted as saying.