2-Day-Old Baby With Rare Brain Condition Undergoes Complex Lifesaving Procedure

A 2-day-old baby, suffering from a rare brain condition, underwent a complex procedure at a hospital in India, during which doctors injected a "superglue" into the infant's brain to help him recover.

The doctors had diagnosed the infant with Vein of Galen Malformation (VOGM) – a potentially fatal complication inside the brain – in the 30th week of pregnancy, according to The Hindu.

After the diagnosis, the parents – M. Thooyavan and S. Sangeetha – began getting in touch with experts to find a hospital that could treat the child. When no one could provide help, the parents contacted a surgeon in New York, who had performed procedures for VOGM.

The New York surgeon asked the family to contact Srinivasan Paramasivam, head of Neuro-Endovascular Surgery at Apollo Hospitals, who had earlier practiced and taught at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

The congenital condition slows down blood flow from high-pressure arteries to low pressure veins. The absence of capillaries made blood rush to those veins, causing them to expand.

“This forces the heart to work overtime to get blood to the rest of the body, and will eventually lead to congestive heart failure,” Paramasivam said, The Hindu reported.

He also said this condition is rare and occurs one in three million births. In 80-90 percent of the cases, it causes fatality due to failure to diagnose the condition or due to lack of treatment.

In the 38th week of pregnancy, a C-Section was performed and the baby was born.

Doctors under the assistance of Paramasivam carried out the procedure called “embolization” to close the malformations with a superglue, making the enlarged veins disappear and allowing blood to flow normally under normal pressure, The Times of India reported.

“The glue is sent to the malformation through a catheter (tube) through the umbilical artery to the brain,” Paramasivam said, adding the complex non-invasive procedure should preferably be done at least six months after birth.

However, in this case, it had to be done within 48 hours after birth as the baby’s condition began to deteriorate rapidly. Doctors had to carry out the procedure with extreme precision and care as any error could completely damage the delicate blood vessels of the two-day-old baby.

Paramasivam said such an embolization procedure, along with cardiac pacing for VOGM, had been performed only a few times in the world. This was most likely the first such instance in India.

Following the procedure, the baby was discharged from the hospital after 10 days and the infant would not require any further interventions. The exact date when the procedure took place was not known.