Premature baby on life support dies, twin lives

Gorai resident Amar Patil had a tough time finding two ventilators in the city hospitals for his prematurely born twins. His wife, Sarita, delivered the babies on December 23 last year, in the 23rd week of her pregnancy.

Never before perhaps had babies been born so premature in the city. Omkar Hospital in Kandivli did not have a neo-natal intensive care unit to treat them.

Patil found one ventilator at Neon Hospital, Malad. But the twin put into it died the very next day. The other one waited seven hours before he was put on ventilator at Holy Family Hospital, Bandra, where he is still recuperating. The doctors at the hospital are doing their best to pull him through.

“My husband frantically called hospitals, relatives and friends to check if they had any contacts in hospitals to help us get a ventilator for our second baby,” Sarita said recalling those harrowing hours on December 23.

“Finally, his senior office colleague told him that Holy Family Hospital had an unoccupied ventilator, and he rushed the baby there. It took him seven hours to find the second ventilator.”

Sarita was allowed to breast feed her baby after eight days of his birth. The baby admitted to the Neon Hospital lasted just a day.

“Late in the night on December 24, I got a call from the hospital saying that the baby had developed complications, and was bleeding from the nose. A while later, we got the news of his death,” Patil said.

The devastated parents have since been doing everything possible to keep the other twin alive. “The baby has hyaline membrane disease, a respiratory disease caused by immature lungs. We have put him on surfactant, a medicine that helps in the development of lungs and other organs,” Dr Chetan Shetty, neonatologist, Holy Family Hospital, said.

A CT scan done on the baby showed that there was no intra-ventricular hemorrhage, which is common in premature babies.

“The baby’s condition is delicate but stable,” Shetty said. He added that the parents were told that the expenses would be high to keep the alive. Moreover, he might develop further complications down the line.

Patil, who works in a multi-national bank, has agreed to bear the cost. Shetty said the baby weighed 905 gm. Its twin that died had weighed 850 gm.

Gynaecologist Duru Shah said, “A baby weighs around 700 gm in the 24th week. In case of twins, the weight would be less than 700.”