City doc gives new lease of life to a premature baby
   Date :23-Mar-2019

 

 
A CITY doctor gave a new lease of life to a premature baby weighing only 490 grams. The baby was born after 26 weeks gestation and is the mother’s second child. The woman who conceived the baby after 16 years undergoing infertility treatment, is 46 years old. She developed hype r tension from 5 month of p r e g n a n c y , amniotic fluid was reduced, and baby’s growth was impaired. These reasons compelled the gynaecologist to terminate pregnancy at 26 weeks of gestation.

On birth, the baby had a very poor respiration level so efforts were made to resuscitate. In such a condition, it was brought to Aastha Children’s Hospital for further treatment. Due to breathing difficulty, the baby was kept on non-invasive respiratory support (C-PAP) machine.

On day 3, the baby’s breathing became stable so the doctor put him on normal oxygen support. Dr Pravin Khapekar, Paediatrician told ‘The Hitavada’, “As the baby had a very low birth weight, we used aggressive nutrition policy. From day 1, the baby was put on parenteral nutrition and from day 3, nasogastric feeding started. On day 12, the baby was on complete feeding by this method. This cycle of feeding not only helped to provide nutrition regularly but also boosted baby to have early weight gain. This has also resulted in reduction of exposure to prolonged IV fluid bringing down the risk of infection.” There are very high incidences of Retinopathy in such a small baby which causes blindness but this baby managed to overcome all these complications with minimum respiratory support and aggressive nutrition.

After nearly 81 days stay in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), Dr Praveen Khapekar and his team’s hard work, the baby was able to go home with a weight of two kg. According to Dr Praveen Khapekar, “To save the life of such an extremely low birth weight baby was challenging in India where most parents belong to low and middle class group.”