Dr. Mary Austin of Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas, performs surgery on babies still in the womb, in order to correct a birth defect before birth. The surgery is delicate, as the patient is unbelievably tiny and the organs and nerves can be like tissue paper.
The birth defect is called spina bifida. Untreated, it can cause a range of disabilities, from incontinence to learning difficulties to an inability to walk. But the surgery carries some risks, too; it can send the mothers into premature labor, months before their due dates — and there’s no guarantee it will prevent physical disabilities in the baby.
Austin, a pediatric surgeon, helps counsel couples through that agonizing decision. She walks them through the potential risks and benefits. She describes each step in the hours-long surgery, from slicing open the uterus to closing the gap around the spinal cord with tiny stitches through developing fetal tissue so fragile, it’s almost “like tissue paper,” she said, vulnerable to tearing.
What she doesn’t tell them: She herself has spina bifida.
Austin kept her spina bifida a secret from most people until now. At one time she was expected to never walk, and although she proved the experts wrong, she does still suffer some disabilities from the defect. Knowing what spina bifida can mean for her patients gives her some insight into what parents go through when they find out their child may have it, but she does not pressure anyone into prenatal surgery. She doesn't even reveal her own spina bifida to them. Read about Mary Austin, her life with spina bifida, and her work to fix it for others, at STAT. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Michael Starghill Jr. for STAT)