London - Doctors have saved a baby from spina bifida by successfully carrying out a ground-breaking operation inside the womb. Surgeons cut through the mother's abdomen to reach the foetus and repair the damage. The baby was subsequently born almost unaffected by his condition.
The operation, described in the Lancet medical journal, was the first to repair a spina bifida lesion in an unborn human baby. Dr Scott Adzick and colleagues from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, carried out the surgery when the mother (27) was 23 weeks pregnant. She had refused an abortion.