Doctors drain fluid from lungs of unborn baby

A mother who is 24 weeks pregnant is recovering from surgery to repair her baby’s lungs.

Doctors were able to insert a device into the baby’s lungs that will allow fluid to drain.  This rare procedure took place on a one-pound, two-inch, unborn child.

Through an ultrasound after surgery, expectant mother mom Melissa Fosnight is looking at her daughter’s healthy lungs for the first time.  Her baby suffers from a rare condition found in one in 15,000 unborn babies.

Dr. Garret Lam with Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center said, “There’s a large collection of fluid in the chest cavity surrounding the lung. And there was so much fluid built up that we worried that it would compress the lungs and not allow the lungs to grow properly so that when the baby was born the lungs wouldn’t function properly.“

Going through mom’s belly and just under the baby’s shoulder, doctors inserted a tube into the baby’s lungs.

The tube’s function is to drain the excess fluids in the baby’s chest cavity.  Doctors say this gives the baby the best chance of a healthy delivery.

“It will stay in there throughout the entire pregnancy until the baby is born,“ said Dr. William Clewell with Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center.

By then, doctors say the problem of fluid filling in the lungs may have repaired itself.

Fosnight is relieved the surgery prevented her baby’s condition from being fatal.  She said, “It was best to catch it before the fluid started spreading even more. Because it had already spread through her lung and started creeping over and pressing her and her diaphragm.“