Miracle Baby’s Special Op

By Louise Hogan

Doctors from two of the country’s top hospitals saved Aideen’s life after they performed an EXIT procedure, a special form of C- section carried out when the foetus has an obstruction blocking the airways.

Parents Anthony and Yonradee McMahon, from Dundalk, Co Louth, said they were “still getting over the shock of it all”.

“At the first scan, 20 weeks in the Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, they saw something and they referred us to Professor Malone in the Rotunda Hospital,” said Anthony.

“It was a large tumour on the top of the baby’s tongue. It was 15 cms at her birth.” It turned out that the blockage was a teratoma – a tumour composed of several different types of tissue.

Professor Fergal Malone, a consultant obstetrician at the Rotunda Hospital, performed the operation on December 28 with Helena Rowley, a consultant paediatric ears, nose and throat surgeon at Children’s University Hospital, Temple Street.

“She is absolutely marvellous. She is perfect now,” the baby’s father said. “I don’t know how to say how excited I am. She is a little pet.

“There is a huge difference between how she was on the 28th and how she is now. It was unbelievable. When she came out of theatre, I just saw the baby briefly as she was heading for the incubator. Then I saw her a couple of hours later. It was a bit frightening to look at her, but to see her now is just amazing. “The doctors were very reassuring. I can’t thank Professor Malone and Dr Rowley enough. We got the best of the best treatment. ” Anthony said Aideen was a miracle baby. “She went through a lot, and she is great now.” Professor Malone and Dr Rowley said they believed this was the first successful EXIT procedure in Ireland in which the baby had survived with a normal long-term prognosis.

The EXIT procedure is performed under deep general anaesthetic to ensure that the patient’s uterus remains soft, to allow the placenta to stay in place for as long as possible. The C-section is then carried out up to the point of delivering the baby’s head only.

The rest of the baby’s body remains in the uterus, with the placenta in place to keep the baby oxygenated. The surgeon then removes the obstruction blocking the baby’s airways before fully removing the baby.

“This emphasises how well the cross-hospital and cross-specialty collaboration between the Rotunda Hospital and the Children’s University Hospital in Temple Street works,” said Prof Malone.

(c) 2007 Belfast Telegraph. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.