Baby Jack, one of thousands of babies born at BWH in 2001, is a healthy and happy five-month-old thanks to a historic procedure performed in an operating room at BWH while he was still in utero.
When Baby Jack was born in November, he did not need a risky newborn surgery to treat his heart condition, thanks to an in utero aortic valve dilation performed by the BWH Fetal Therapy Team in collaboration with specialists from neighboring Children’s Hospital.
Susan Driscoll, RN, an OR staff nurse in Vascular Surgery, was one of those specialists who provided perioperative nursing care to the mother during the procedure. “Obviously this case posed more risk than the procedures with which I am typically involved since two lives were at stake. I was confident with my experience and ability as an OR nurse that I could handle the nursing care required for the mother, but it was comforting to be surrounded by experts from Children’s Hospital, should a problem have come up with the fetus,” said Driscoll, who is used to being involved in BWH “firsts.” Driscoll was also involved in the first single and double lung transplants performed in 1989.
The fetal surgical procedure performed in OR #40 exhibited a stellar team effort by BWH Fetal Therapy Program and the Children’s Advanced Fetal Care Center —two teams of medical professionals who are collaboratively approaching a number of fetal therapies—who worked carefully to repair the valve in Jack’s grape-sized heart, while being certain not to harm the fetus or the mother.
In a procedure as delicate and complex as this one, highly skilled nurses, including Driscoll; high risk obstetrician/gynecologists; radiologists; anesthesiologists; neonatologists; surgical technicians; and other clinicians involved with BWH’s other fetal surgery cases were all called upon to assist.
Even though Jack was born six weeks early, his heart valve has yet to need further widening. “We were handed a miracle,” said Jack’s mother upon the birth of her healthy child.