Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad saves COVID affected critical pregnant woman and her newborn baby.

A team of doctors at Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad, accomplished a near miracle by saving a mother and child, from a highly critical health condition. The mother, into her 7th month of pregnancy, developed COVID and had to be treated on ventilator. To save the baby, a pre-term delivery was performed on her despite the mother’s condition. Both mother and baby were discharged hail and healthy. This was a first-of-its-kind care in this part of the world, where a 7-month preterm baby was delivered from a mother undergoing infertility care, while being ventilated for COVID.

he 34-year-old patient, was undergoing infertility treatment and was into the seventh month of pregnancy. Being a precious delivery for the couple , they were seeking the guidance of Dr Sharmila, Senior Consultant Pediatrician at Apollo Hospitals, to avoid later stage medical complications. However, recently along with the other members of her family, the mother got infected with COVID-19 and was brought to the hospital on July 15th in a very critical condition.

On admission, her condition deteriorated rapidly, and saturation levels were dismally low necessitating ventilator management. There was little hope of her survival medically, as nearly 90% of pregnant women needing ventilation, breath their last or end up delivering still born preterm babies.

The medical team too had its set of challenges specific to this case:

The Doctors took these challenges in their stride and were keen to save both the mother and baby, but on a priority wanted to save the mother. During the course of the treatment the mother stopped responding and chances of her survival seemed slim, the team decided to retrieve at least the baby before the mother succumbs. The baby was delivered on July 17th by operating on the mother, while sustaining her on ventilator. But the baby too was found to be ill and not responding to resuscitation. The team revived baby’s heart function with medication, but the risk of it not surviving continued to be high. The baby later developed a blood stream infection and was treated. The baby gradually recovered, she started responding to the treatment and got better by the day. The fully recovered baby was discharged today. In the meantime, the mother saw a phenomenal recovery and was discharged on August 10th, 2020.

The team of Doctors at Apollo Hospitals, who made this near miracle possible were Dr Deepak, Dr Nagaraj and Dr Sidharth, Critical care specialists: Dr Suneetha Nareddy, Dr Ravi Kiran and the team of Infectious disease specialists, Dr Vimee Bindra, Gynecologist; Dr Sanath Reddy, Anesthetist; Dr Sharmila, Neonatologist; Dr Chandrakant, Pulmonologist and Dr Prasad, Radiologist. During this period one of the Doctors from the Critical Care Team ended up getting infected with COVID, but the entire team risked their life to see this miracle happen despite several odds.