Baby doing well after surgery

Press, 11 July 1989, Page 1

Baby doing well after surgery

By

GLEN PERKINSON

ind SARAH SANDS

A Christchurch baby rushed to Melbourne for life-saving surgery at the week-end is making a good recovery, hospital officials say. Baby Zach, born six weeks premature at Christchurch Women’s Hospital last Thursday, suffered from a rare bladder and bowel condition called cloacal extrophy. The bowel and bladder were both in several pieces outside the abdomen. The condition occurs in only one in 250,000 babies. A spokesman for Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne said all children born with the condition and not operated on had died within a week of birth. Surgery had been attempted only three times for the condition. Zach’s surgery was performed by Mr Justin Kelly who also did the earlier operations at Royal Children’s, believed to be the largest children’s hospital in the Englishspeaking world. Zach’s parents have requested that theirs and their child’s identity remain confidential.

The surgery took Sy 2 hours. Zach was on life-support systems until yesterday evening, when he was moved to a normal ward. Mr Kelly first performed the operation in mid-1988 on a New South Wales baby, who has. made a good recovery. It can take more than a year, however,, before the reconstructed organs settle. Zach’s mother will join him and his father in Melbourne in a week. A hospital spokesman believed Zach would be well enough to return to New Zealand in about a fortnight. The director of the neo-natal unit at Christchurch Women’s Hospital, Dr Rosemary Johnson, yesterday praised Air New Zealand for its efforts in flying Zach to Melbourne. “Air New Zealand has an incubator which we use regularly on domestic flights. Thanks to the tremendous cooperation between everybody, and the customs officer who issued the baby with a passport in 90 minutes, he was able to get away on the Friday night flight,” said Dr Johnson. Picture, page 9