Giving Families a Fighting Chance: How Fetal Surgery Saves Lives Before Birth

For many practicing doctors today, advancements in science currently unfolding seemed futuristic during their years of training. Fetal care and in utero surgery are at the forefront of these advancements. Specifically, over the last 50 years, growth of maternal-fetal medicine and the importance of fetal care centers have grown exponentially. Medical evolutions have paved the way for specialists to treat an unborn child as a separate patient, offering life-saving care before birth.  

 

Our team at Children’s Hospital Colorado has performed more than 1,600 surgeries, making us one of the most experienced fetal centers in the country. That’s why this week we are thrilled to welcome Sarkis (Chris) Derderian, MD, as our guest on Charting Pediatrics. As an expert in this field, he is currently an assistant professor of surgery and a pediatric surgeon at Children's Colorado, but his passion for fetal care began during his medical school years. “It was actually trauma that looped me into pediatric surgery and that I remember a 3-month-old baby that was in a car accident, terribly sick at the time, but at the time I left that rotation that baby was up moving around and it was just really a reflection of how resilient this population is,” Dr. Derderian says.  

 

Throughout this episode we dive into what fetal surgery currently looks like and how its progression gives as a look inside what the next 50 years could look like. “I think it’s going to be revolutionary what we can do,” Dr. Derderian says. It’s a space that’s pushing the envelope to provide a new quality of life.  

 

Some highlights of today’s episode include: 

 

·       Conditions being intervened by fetal surgery 

·       Diagnosing disease processes early in gestation 

·       How concepts like animation help make information digestible for families 

·       The future potential of fetal surgery 

 

For more information on Children’s Hospital Colorado, visit: childrenscolorado.org