Hyderabad’s Rainbow Hospital records first direct fetal heart surgery, saves unborn baby

Rainbow Children’s Heart Institute (RCHI), Hyderabad, has reported the first successful clinical case of direct fetal immunotherapy to treat immune-mediated fetal myocarditis.

Hyderabad: Rainbow Children’s Heart Institute (RCHI) on Wednesday reported successful clinical case of direct fetal immunotherapy to treat immune-mediated fetal myocarditis.

Billed as the first successful clinical case, published recently in the prestigious JACC: Case Reports, the in-utero intervention saved the life of an unborn baby suffering from a rare, life-threatening heart condition caused by maternal antibodies.

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Instead of giving therapy to the mother in the hope that it reaches the baby (fetus), doctors delivered the treatment directly into the fetus’s body. 

The 29-year-old expectant mother has Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disorder, due to which the fetus developed cardiomyopathy, which is inflammation of the heart muscle, and a dangerously slow heart rate.

As the mother’s antibodies were rapidly damaging the heart of the fetus, the doctors opted to deliver treatment directly to the fetus under advanced imaging guidance.

The intervention led to a dramatic recovery of the fetal heart’s pumping function and normalised its rhythm. The baby was subsequently delivered at term in stable condition.