Baby Wise

“Today they are the proud parents of four-month-old twins,” said Col (Dr) Yoginder Singh,who is incharge of foetal centre. He shared that foetal therapy is a relatively new branch of obstetrics that is helping women with high risk pregnancies to have healthy babies. Besides treating families of armed forces’ personnel,a large number of civilians from all over the country have benefited from the centre at Armed Forces Medical College.

About Subhangani’s case,Singh said that chorionic villous sampling was performed at 11 weeks of pregnancy,which showed that both foetuses were free of the deadly Pompey’s disease. “She gave birth to two girls who are healthy and disease free as confirmed by laboratory tests,” he said.

Brigadier (professor) R D Wadhwa,Head of the Department at AFMC,said that the foetal medicine centre of AFMC caters to women who have had babies with birth defects,repeated abortions or still births and are worried that these problems can recur. In such cases the foetus requires intrauterine therapy.

Civilians are getting free treatment at both in-patient as well as out-patient departments. “The obstetric and gynaecology department which started in 2005,and primarily did intrauterine transfusions,is now performing large number of foetal interventions including Amniocentesis,Chorionic Villous Sampling (CVS),foetal reduction in high order pregnancies,cordocentesis,and prenatal diagnosis for IEM (Inborn Error of Metabolism). Some of them are in very high risk pregnancies with success results comparable to the best centres in the world. As many as 200 patients have benefitted from intrauterine therapy while several others have been treated over the years,” Singh added.

He also informed that the department has started doing intrauterine foetal shunt procedures,which are rarely performed in our country. “Interestingly,a majority of patients who benefited from the treatments are civilians and some of them from very low socioeconomic status. These people could have never been able to afford such sophisticated treatment outside as the treatment is totally free and of very high standard,” said Col Singh. Also,there are plans to set up a genetic centre so that patients with genetic disorders such as thalassaemia can be diagnosed during pregnancy.