| A baby born in Liverpool six weeks ago
is believed to be the first in the world to survive undamaged a brain haemorrhage before birth
and surgery three days afterwards.
Dylan Harris is now doing well at home and his doctors believe that he will develop normally. "He's a little fighter," his father, David, said yesterday. Paul May, consultant neurosurgeon at Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Liverpool, performed the lifesaving surgery to drain a blood clot on Dylan's brain. "At this stage the skull is so thin you could use a pair of scissors, so it was relatively simple to cut away a square of bone, he said. Dylan's mother, Vickie, 29, of Claughton Village, Wirral, had learned from a routine scan at 30 weeks that her baby had a rare subdural haemorrhage - a clot between the brain and skull. Only about six babies in the world are known to have had this complication and few have survived or recovered without brain damage. Dylan, whose head had swelled dangerously from 3in to nearly 41/2in, was delivered by caesarean section at 34 weeks and underwent the two-hour surgery three days later. Mrs Harris said: "He just kept fighting all the way. There were times when we were ready to give up on him, but he never gave up on us." Ross Welch, consultant obstetrician at Arrowe Park Hospital, Liverpool, said: "It was very difficult to know the best treatment because no one really knew what had caused the clot or what was going to happen." |