A quantum leap.. Successful surgery on the brain of a fetus inside his mother’s womb in France

An operation conducted by surgeons in a French hospital for a fetus with a serious brain deformity while he was still in his mother’s womb was crowned with success, according to what the Paris Hospital Authority announced today, Friday, just several months after the success of an American team in performing a similar operation.

A statement by the authority that includes the most prominent public hospitals in the “Ile-de-France” region stated that “a deformity in the vein of Galenus was treated by embolization in the uterus” in September 2022.

Surgeons at the Parisian “Necker” hospital carried out this first operation of its kind, which was first reported by the newspaper “Le Parisien”.

The achievement is not the operation of a child in his mother’s womb, as several operations of this kind have already been performed in recent years, especially for spinal cord deformities.

problem leading to death

However, the operation that took place in “Necker” directly targeted the brain of the fetus, which was suffering from a deformity in the gallinus vein, which is a cerebral blood vessel, a problem that often leads to the death of the newborn or to serious consequences later.

The operation itself involved high risks, but the idea of ​​performing it was suggested to the parents, given that the deformity, if it remained unchanged, would have led to dangerous and fatal consequences for the child in the future.

The peculiarity of the operation also lies in its limited damage, as “a delicate catheter was placed in the vein of Galen, through the mother’s skin and uterus, and then through the skull of the fetus,” according to the “Paris Hospitals.”

The operation went smoothly in half an hour, and the eight-month-old is doing very well.

Similar process

In the same context, surgeons in the United States performed a similar operation last March in a Boston hospital, which was also successful, and a scientific article about it was published in the “Stroke” magazine.

In the article, the researchers considered that “this approach represents a quantum leap” in the face of this type of deformity, noting that such an operation allows intervention at an early stage and before irreversible complications occur.