12/13/2011 02:34:00 AM
Weighing less than ten ounces at birth, two severely premature infants are today thriving, with little to no side effects despite their very early delivery.
Both Madeline Mann, born in 1989 with a birth weight of just 9.9 ounces—the world record at the time—and 7-year-old Rumaisa Rahman, born weighing just whose 9.2 ounces at birth, continue to thrive despite their chances for survival at birth.
Madeline is now in college and is an honors student majoring in psychology, while Rumaisa is just getting underway with her education in first grade.
Since 1989, two other babies have been born who weighed less than Madeline, and another born in Germany had a birth weight equal to hers. However, Rumaisa continues to hold the record for the world’s tiniest baby born who has managed to beat the odds.
Dr. Jonathan Muraskas of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois is the miracle worker who managed to resuscitate the young ladies as infants at a suburban Chicago hospital. In a medical report on the girls that was recently published online in the journal , he cautioned that although these preemies managed to survive, that they are not models of hope for medical technology, but remarkable exceptions to nature’s rule.
Sadly, even with the most advanced medical care, most babies born so small do not survive. Muraskas noted, “These are such extreme cases,” and are by no means “a benchmark” for measuring success in efforts to save such tiny babies.
The question as to the real age of viability (ability to live) remains to be one of heated debate. While the report authors pointed out that the majority of newborn specialists consider the age of viability to be after 25 weeks of gestation, some American doctors attempt to save infants at 22 weeks. In fact, doctors in Japan actually consider the age of viability to be 22 weeks of gestation.
A normal pregnancy lasts on average 40 weeks. The age of viability determines when medical intervention will occur to keep the baby breathing. The report suggests that babies younger than 25 weeks are considered to be in a gray zone of viability in which the determination whether or not to provide intervention is not clearly defined. Muraskas says the report emphasizes that gestational age is even more critical for survival than size.
In the cases of Madeline and Rumaisa, both babies were delivered over one month early via cesarean section due to their mothers having developed dangerously high blood pressure linked with pregnancy—a condition known as severe pre-eclampsia.
Their mothers were given steroid drugs prior to the birth of the babies to aid in accelerating growth of the lungs of the fetuses. Immediately following birth, the infants were put on breathing machines with the use of spaghetti-sized tubes.
At birth, both babies were the average size of an 18-week-old fetus although they were several weeks older ,with Madeline at almost 27 weeks at birth, and Rumaisa at nearly 26 weeks. Because of this, their organs, including their lungs, were at a stage of development that allowed for the possibility of survival, although both infants required intensive medical intervention.
They both remained on the breathing machines for approximately two months, and required hospitalization for about four months.
In addition, both Madeline and Rumaisa were treated for retinopathy, an eye condition that commonly occurs among preemies, and known to cause blindness in severe cases. Madeline also suffered mild brain bleeding, but with no lasting effects. Interestingly, Rumaisa actually has a twin who was born at more than twice her size.
At age 20, Madeline had become a petite young woman at a height of 4 feet 8 inches, and weighed about 65 pounds. Now 22, she is a senior at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. The only lasting effect of her premature birth appears to be asthma.
Rumaisa was 3.5 feet tall and weighed 33 pounds at age 5, which put her at being smaller than about 90 percent of other children her age. She currently attends first grade in suburban Chicago.
Since 1936, 124 preemies weighing under a pound (less than 14 ounces) have been recorded on an online registry of the world’s tiniest babies that is maintained by Dr. Edward Bell, a University of Iowa pediatrics professor. By Bell’s estimate around 7,500 babies born in the United States each year weigh less than a pound, with about a 10 percent survival rate. However, not all survivors are included in this estimate, as the registry information is based on voluntary reports from doctors.
Posted in: HEALTH
