Doctors of Almazov Center rescued a pregnant woman with a brain tumor and helped to give birth to a healthy child.
On October 18, 2018, a young woman late in pregnancy was delivered at Almazov National Medical Research Center by helicopter from one of the city suburbs- Tikhvin.
The 34-year-old woman suffered from a brain tumor and underwent two neurosurgical operations one year ago: surgery of hard-to-reach tumor and a shunt system implantation to ensure the flow of excess cerebrospinal fluid into the abdominal cavity.
The long-awaited pregnancy was the only chance to become a mother for her before the upcoming radiotherapy. Contrary to the recommended «medical abortion», she decided to give birth to the child. However, the growing belly led to disturbances in the shunt drainage and, accordingly, to hydrocephalus. The task of the Almazov Center specialists was to save the future mother, who was in serious condition due to the dysfunction of the shunt system and increased intracranial pressure, as well as to save the life of the child, to help him to be born at the full-term period.
The team of leading specialists was involved in solving the non-standard situation and conducted a number of unique surgical procedures: in particular, neurosurgeons together with vascular surgeons applied a minimally invasive high-tech technique — a non-functioning catheter was removed from the abdominal cavity under local anesthesia and replaced with a catheter immersed in one of the heart chambers. Thus, intracranial pressure was normalized which enabled obstetricians to prepare the mother for childbirth and the child for birth within 5 days.
After that, at a gestational age of 36 weeks, the leading specialists of the Center made the only right decision to perform an operative delivery with simultaneous neurosurgical reimplantation of the draining shunt back into the abdominal cavity. For the first time, neurosurgeons and obstetricians worked at one operating table and proved the possibility of successful joint actions of doctors of different profiles and their mutual assistance.
The integration of highly specialized modern techniques of different profiles («neurosurgery», «obstetrics and gynecology» and «cardiovascular surgery») allowed making non-standard solutions at non-standard situations in the Almazov Center, combining unique skills of specialists into a single multidisciplinary process of medical care.
Finally, the baby was born, the weight is 3100 g, 7-8 points of the Apgar scale. Mom feels well and is already in the ward with her child. In future, she will have radiotherapy that was impossible during the pregnancy.
