As one of the country’s leading medical centers diagnosing and treating fetal anomalies, Texas Children’s Fetal Center is proud to announce the birth of Baby Charlotte, the team’s first patient to undergo in-utero surgery for the treatment of spina bifida. Baby Charlotte’s mother went into labor nearly 11 weeks after fetal closure was performed, and delivered by cesarean section.  Mother and baby are doing well

-Team@CMHF

• Texas Children’s Fetal Center is now one of the very few centers in the country providing all aspects of fetal surgery, and the addition of this capability increases the options of our Texas and regional patients tremendously, said Dr. Michael Belfort, MD, PhD, obstetrician and gynecologist-in-chief at Texas Children’s Hospital and professor and chairman of the Department of Obstetrics at Baylor College of Medicine.
• They have a magnificent team of specialists from a number of departments working together in the best interests of our fetal and neonatal patients.
• Myelomeningocele, also known as spina bifida or open neural tube defect (NTD), occurs in 3.4 out of every 10,000 live births in the US and is the most common permanently disabling birth defect for which there is no known cure.
• Myelomeningocele is a developmental defect in which the spine is improperly formed and the spinal cord is open to and fused with the skin; it is usually associated with hydrocephalus, or the buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain, which requires surgical treatment to drain the fluid via an implanted device called a shunt.  The standard of care is neurosurgical closure of the defect in the first days of life.
• A prenatal diagnosis of spina bifida can be daunting for families because it is often associated with a constellation of neurologic disabilities as well as hydrocephalus, said Dr Robert Bollo, pediatric neurosurgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital and assistant professor of neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine.
• Closure of the spinal defect before birth reduces the risk of hydrocephalus and may improve motor function in select patients.
• Fetal surgery is an exciting new tool in the multidisciplinary commitment to life-long care of patients with spina bifida.
• Recently, a NICHD-funded study entitled the Management of Myelomeningocele Study (MOMS) published in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated a significant decrease in the risk of hydrocephalus for select patients undergoing fetal closure of the spine, as well as possible improvement in lower extremity function, compared to patients who underwent standard closure after birth.
• The confirmation that fetal surgery may decrease the physical challenges some of these babies face is not only a ray of hope for families, it is also a significant achievement for fetal medicine, said Dr Darrell Cass, co-director of Texas Children’s Fetal Center and associate professor, departments of surgery, pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine.

Breakthrough studies like the MOMS trial are exciting and reaffirm our commitment to advancing fetal medicine and giving babies with complications and anomalies the healthiest possible start to life.”

• The MOMS trial is the second fetal intervention that has proved beneficial through a multi-center randomized clinical trial.
• The first was the Euro FETUS trial for laser ablation in the treatment of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS).
• Texas Children’s Fetal Center has performed almost 400 cases of laser ablation for TTTS.
• We are excited to be able to offer these types of life-changing procedures to our patients through our one-of-a-kind Fetal Center, said Cris Daskevich, senior vice president at the new Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women.
• He further added that their mission was about caring for women through every stage of their pregnancy and he was grateful that they have a program that can provide hope for these mothers in such a scary time in their pregnancy.
• The Fetal Center at Texas Children’s Hospital has developed extensive screening and diagnostic algorithms for pregnancies with fetal spina bifida.
• It takes a large multi-disciplinary team to successfully complete these types of fetal surgeries.
• The team includes physicians from maternal fetal medicine, pediatric surgery and neurosurgery, anesthesiology, neonatology, pediatric radiology, cardiology and a highly-dedicated group of specialized nurses, ultrasound technologists and genetic counselors.For further reading log on to
  http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/23/4286145/texas-childrens-fetal-center-performs.html