Mumbai doctors give new lease of life to girl born with brain damage

Now two months old, the child was born full-term and weighed about 3.5 kg. Representation pic

City doctors have given a new lease of life to a girl who was born without heartbeats and had birth-asphyxia, a type of brain damage, and had been having seizures. Now two months old, the child was born full-term via emergency Caesarean section, weighing about 3.5 kg, and referred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Wockhardt hospital, Mira Road.

"When she was brought in, we were informed that the baby did not have heartbeats or respiration at birth. The paediatrician who attended the delivery did a wonderful job by timely resuscitating the baby and the spontaneous breaths were established at approximately 25 minutes of birth," said Dr Virender Verma, the neonatologist under whose supervision the child was treated.

The treatment

When the child was brought to the NICU, she was having seizures, he said. "We quickly tried therapeutic hypothermia, which involves bringing down the body temperature 3-4 degrees Celsius below the normal temperature (37 degrees C), in order to slow down the ongoing metabolic injury (caused by birth asphyxia) in the brain. The metabolic injury is most pronounced in the initial three to four days of birth, therefore, therapeutic hypothermia is given for 72 hours," said the doctor. The child was given medicine within 10 minutes of her arrival. "This medicine has been proven to be beneficial in this condition and protects from future handicaps," said Dr Verma.

The child has had no seizures since the second day of her birth. "The dose of anti-seizure medicine was reduced to bare minimum on discharge, we plan to stop it altogether at three months of follow-up," he added. Her parents are happy that she is growing up like a normal child. "When she was born, she couldn't breathe properly, didn't cry, and her heart was not beating. We panicked and didn't understand what to do. It is a new lease of life to her, and us. She is fine and accepting feeds. She is about two months old now and has had no episode of seizure at home," said the father, a resident of Dahisar.