German hospital saves baby with pioneering surgery in womb

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2007

BERLIN (AFP) — A German hospital is celebrating a world first after carrying out life-saving surgery that stimulated lung growth in a baby still in the womb.

Doctors at Bonn University Clinic feared that baby Miriam would die when her mother's foetal membrane burst in the 20th week of pregnancy, removing the child's protective liquid cushion.

Without the fluid, the organs pressed on the lung and Miriam's development was being fatally impaired. She was also unprotected against germs in the womb, leaving her susceptible to life-threatening infection.

Most babies are aborted after a rupture at such an early stage, but Miriam's parents jumped at the chance after the hospital offered them what is normally high-risk pre-natal surgery.

"But here we were...