The announcement was made on May 5, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Health (MSP).
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The objective of the initiative, according to Minister Karina Rando, is to improve the quality of life of unborn babies. The cost, which from now on will be financed by the National Resources Fund (FNR), includes the preoperative stage, the intervention and the follow-up of the case, and is around 20,000 dollars.
Likewise, representatives of the Ãlvarez Caldeyro Barcia Foundation and authorities of the hospital and the University of the Republic (Udelar) attended.
During the ceremony, Minister Rando reported that the purpose of the Fetal Surgery Program, a nationwide initiative, is to avoid complications and sequelae in unborn babies, who could even die in utero if the necessary procedures are not performed.
She added that the decision to include this type of intervention as a universal benefit of the FNR was taken as part of the process of incorporating benefits developed by the MSP, within the framework of the National Integrated Health System (SNIS).
The financing includes the preoperative stage, the intervention and the follow-up of the case.
The hierarch explained that fetal surgeries allow babies to develop the full capacity of their organs inside the womb and explained that the program incorporates the financing of three kinds of surgical procedures.
One of them is performed after the detection of myelomeningocele, a type of spina bifida.
The second case covers the transfused-transfuser syndrome: monochorionic twin pregnancies, that is, when two or more fetuses live with a single placenta. In this, one of the babies does not develop as expected, since the passage of blood flow to the placenta is unbalanced and each fetus receives a different volume.
The third service corresponds to the treatment of the twin reverse arterial perfusion sequence. In this case, one of the fetuses has not developed a heart, causing the blood circulation of the viable fetus to be overloaded by delivery of blood to a non-viable fetus.
The surgical procedure involves cutting communication between the two.
For his part, in statements to the press, Bianchi maintained that this in utero fetal intervention plan seeks to improve the quality of life of children and position the hospital as a member of a Latin American fetal surgery network.
The director explained that the Hospital de la Mujer's Clinical Fetology Center, in charge of carrying out the interventions, is made up of some 25 professionals, including sonographers, gynecologists, anesthetists, instrumentalists and surgeons, who work in prenatal diagnosis and the treatment of malformations.
It has the support of the Ãlvarez Caldeyro Barcia Foundation; representatives from ASSE and the School of Medicine work together to train the team.
The surgeries that, according to the professional, are long and complex instances require specific training that doctors develop in the city of São Paulo, Brazil.
The cost of the operations, which are performed between the 20th and 29th week of pregnancy, ranges between 15,000 and 20,000 dollars. ■