Babies in the womb can be operated on for medical reasons in at least three Russian cities.
Professor Dmitry Ivanov, chief neonatologist at the Ministry of Health and rector of the St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University, told the Parliamentary Gazette that currently children in the mother's womb can be operated on for medical reasons in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.
However, there is no separate specialty of "intrauterine surgeon" in the Russian Federation. The operation involves doctors of different specialties: a surgeon, an obstetrician, a doctor of radiation diagnostics.
According to the professor, fetal medicine is one of the high-tech sections of perinatal protection of the fetus, which implies surgical intervention in the fetus in the womb. This direction is developing rapidly in Russia.
Ivanov noted that in the perinatal center of the Pediatric University such operations are performed by doctors who have long been engaged in surgery, obstetrics, ultrasonic diagnostics. Doctors from other regions come to the university.
The expert emphasized that due to the participation of doctors of different specialties in surgeries of unborn babies, legal issues arise as to who is responsible for the health of the baby in this case.
The professor said that malformations of any organ can occur. The point of such medical intervention is to interrupt the possible consequences that will already be in the born child, if the operation is not done.
The operation, according to Ivanov, carries certain risks: a woman may go into labor and give birth to a premature baby. Also, the future mom may have a detachment of the placenta, bleeding. In this regard, any intrauterine intervention is performed on medical indications and when the potential benefit exceeds the potential risk.