AKRON, Ohio, July 10, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A baby boy, diagnosed in utero with a huge cyst on his neck that could prevent him from breathing once he was born, is healthy and well due to the extraordinary preparations for his birth by the staff of several Akron, Ohio hospitals.
During Angie Daniell's routine ultrasound at 34 weeks into her pregnancy in April, the doctor noticed that the baby’s head measurements were larger than normal and referred her to the Fetal Treatment Center at Akron Children’s Hospital for assessment.
At Angie's appointment with Dr. Melissa Mancuso, the maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Children’s Hospital, an 8-centimeter mass, almost as big as the baby’s head, was found on his neck.
“Immediately, I was concerned about airway compromise at delivery,” Dr. Mancuso told the Akron Beacon Journal. “As soon as I saw her and found the neck mass, I started pulling the forces together to get this delivery accomplished at Children’s.”
Akron Children’s Hospital normally handles medical problems for newborns who are transferred there shortly after being born in other area hospitals that provide maternity and delivery care. But when Dr. Mancuso realized that seconds would count for baby Ashton Daniell if he was born with his airway blocked, she set in motion the preparations needed to have Ashton born at the pediatric hospital.
His delivery by C-section was scheduled for a few weeks before his due date to reduce the risk of labor starting without a team of specialists ready.
In the meantime Dr. Mancuso assembled a team of over 30 specialists and staff from area hospitals that included a neonatologist, a general surgeon, an ear-nose-and-throat specialist, anesthesiologists and respiratory therapists.
Click “like” if you are PRO-LIFE!
In all, eight physicians, two certified nurse anesthetists, 16 nurses and several respiratory therapists were on hand at Ashton's birth to care for both mom and baby.
The team developed a plan to quickly evaluate the baby and open his airway if needed. If they couldn’t intubate him because of the mass, surgeons would be standing by to try to drain the cyst or perform a tracheotomy.
“Every second is crucial,” Dr. Mancuso said.
On the morning of May 10, everything was ready.
“It was kind of frightening, but the fact that they had this whole thing worked out was reassuring,” Ashton’s mom Angie said.
Ashton was born without complication, weighing 8 pounds and 10 ounces. Angie recalled that she heard Ashton cry, a sign that he was breathing on his own, before he was whisked away for evaluation.
In the agonizing minutes that followed, minutes that Ashton's parents knew were life or death for their child, Angie said she lay there counting the seconds that went by.
“That was sheer horror, those couple minutes,” Ashton's father Andrew recalled.
Moments later a nurse came to tell them that no intervention was needed and Ashton was fine.
“He’s OK,” she told them.
Ashton spent eight days in the intensive care unit before he was released to go home to his parents and two-year-old brother Anderson.
He is scheduled to return to Children’s Hospital this week for surgery to remove the mass from his neck.
“We definitely feel that God had a hand in this,” his father told the Beacon Journal. “He put the right people around us to help us out.”
Read the complete story here.