Five month-old Lake Annabelle Hall is alive today because doctors at Children’s Hospital of Colorado decided to give her a chance at life by removing a cyst from her lung which would have prevented her from being able to breath outside the womb.
Fox News is reporting that doctors discovered the cyst in Lake’s lung during a routine 20-week visit with her mother, Savannah Perry of Lafayette, Colorado. Dr. Timothy Crombleholme discovered the abnormality and quickly realized that a lung cyst would prevent the baby from breathing when she was born.
“You could push air in, but it wouldn’t come out,” Crombleholme said. “She wouldn’t make it out of the delivery room.”
Crombleholme decided to wait until 30 weeks into the pregnancy before attempting surgery to remove the cyst and clear Lake’s airway.
When the right time arrived, Crumbleholme assembled a team of 43 doctors and nurses which included one team to care for Perry during the cesarean operation, another team for the baby while it was still in the womb, one to care for Lake during the procedure, and a fourth team to care for the baby after she was born.
On November 6, doctors began the procedure which involved pulling Lake halfway out of her mother’s womb but leaving the umbilical cord and placenta intact, which served as life support for the baby during the operation. Once outside the womb, it took nine minutes to remove the cyst and close the incision in her right side. Another 10 minutes were needed to run a tube down the baby’s throat to make sure her airways were clear. Once this was certain, doctors cut the umbilical cord and delivered her into her mother’s arms.
Although the baby needed oxygen for the first four months to help her breathe, she is now doing fine and her most recent chest examinations were declared normal.
“No more surgeries,” her mother happily declared.
“Lake is a normal, healthy, young baby girl just like any other baby born without any issues,” added the baby’s father, Erik Hall.
Lake was given a new lease on life with a kind of surgery known as an “exit procedure” which used to be performed only occasionally on pre-birth infants. Thankfully, specialty hospitals across the country are now performing these life-saving surgeries dozens of times a year, thus sparing children that may have otherwise been born with serious health problems or aborted.
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