Kolkata: A premature baby has miraculously survived four life-threatening ailments – a high heart rate at birth or tachycardia, hypoglycemia, respiratory distress triggered by apnea and sepsis, after two weeks of intensive treatment at a city private hospital. Born at 32 weeks, the newborn girl had developed respiratory distress immediately after delivery and had to be shifted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). On the second day, it started suffering from recurrent apnea or a low respiration rate during sleep and hypoglycemia or low blood glucose level. It was followed by tachycardia or high heart rate that forced doctors to put the baby on oxygen support.
After two weeks of supportive therapy at Charnock Hospital where she was treated, the baby has shown remarkable improvement and all her parameters have turned normal. She has been shifted out of NICU and is now in her mother’s care at the hospital. According to a team of doctors led by Gautam Dutta Sharma, paediatric cardiologist Lopamudra Mishra and paediatrician Sovana Haque, an all-out effort by the medical staff, which kept a 24-hour vigil on the baby, managed to save the child from a seemingly hopeless situation. “The baby suffered from PDA or a cardiac defect, sepsis with hyperinsulinemia. We had to put her on dobutamine support for her heart and other antibiotics. It was accompanied by symptomatic management at the NICU. During the subsequent two weeks of intense therapy at the NICU, the baby also suffered from neonatal hyperbilirubinemia. A concerted effort managed to control all the symptoms and her parameters started turning normal within a week,” said Dutta Sharma.
Doctors at Charnock said such multiple complications of a severe nature often have ‘poor outcomes’ but in this case, they managed to save the child. The parent of the girl, named Aratrika, are ecstatic at her recovery. They took to a social network site to thank the doctors and the medical staff. “All of them, especially the paediatrician and the entire NICU staff worked round-the-clock to save our child. They did everything possible to save our new-born baby from the health issues she had,” they wrote.
The child will have to stay under regular screening for her cardiac condition.