The most read Vietnamese newspaper
Edition: International | Vietnamese
© Copyright 1997 VnExpress.net. All rights reserved.
According to Tran Ngoc Hai, director of Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, the baby weighed 3.7 kg at birth, had a rosy complexion, breathed naturally without respiratory support, and is feeding and developing normally. She was born on July 19 in Singapore and later underwent a minor procedure to tie off two pulmonary arteries.
Just months earlier, when the fetus was 25 weeks old and weighed only 600 grams, doctors discovered a severe aortic valve stenosis: the main heart valve was almost completely sealed, and the left ventricle had shrunk to just 1.4 millimeters, the size of a pencil tip. A Vietnamese medical team used an ultra-fine needle to guide a catheter through the mother’s abdomen and into the baby’s heart, no larger than a strawberry, to repair the defect.
The intervention saved the baby’s life. Without it, doctors said, the condition would have been fatal after birth. Thanks to the early correction, the girl only needed a light follow-up procedure instead of major open-heart surgery.
Doctors from Tu Du Hospital and Children’s Hospital 1 in Ho Chi Minh City embrace each other after successfully completing the fetal heart intervention on a Singaporean patient. Video courtesy of the doctors
The woman, who conceived through in-vitro fertilization after more than a decade of infertility, was referred to Vietnam by a Singaporean specialist in late May, a sign of growing trust in the country’s fetal medicine expertise. The case is now being reviewed by the Ministry of Health as Vietnam’s first documented fetal cardiac catheterization.
In June, the ministry honored doctors from Tu Du Hospital and Children’s Hospital 1 for their pioneering teamwork. Deputy health minister Tran Van Thuan called it proof of Vietnamese doctors’ determination to "push the limits of medicine" and a foundation for Vietnam’s emergence as a regional hub for fetal and personalized medicine.
At an international conference on Nov. 6, Hai described the case as part of a broader "revolution in fetal diagnostics." Detecting heart and neurological defects before 13 weeks of pregnancy remains one of medicine’s toughest challenges, he said, but one that Vietnamese specialists are now embracing.
