JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, May 2, 2025

Doctor: Sextuplets can end up with complications

by

20130309

Par­ents Pe­tra Lee Foon and Kieron Cum­mings will have to en­sure that their six ba­bies are con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tored by doc­tors un­til they reach the age of five. The ba­bies who were born pre­ma­ture­ly last week at the Mt Hope Women's Hos­pi­tal can end up with long term com­pli­ca­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to ob­ste­tri­cian/gy­nae­col­o­gist Dr Afraz Ali, who was part of the team that de­liv­ered the ba­bies, res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems and de­vel­op­men­tal dif­fi­cul­ties are as­so­ci­at­ed with this type of birth. He was speak­ing about how clomiphene cit­rate af­fects a moth­er and a ba­by. He said it was ex­treme­ly un­com­mon for spon­ta­neous sex­tu­plets to oc­cur with­out fer­til­i­ty treat­ment.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ali said, "Be­cause of the stress­es the ba­bies un­der­go im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter de­liv­ery in terms of neona­tal care...re­mem­ber a big part of that is res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems and with res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems you have to be con­cerned about how the brain is af­fect­ed by it and as a re­sult of that you have to mon­i­tor these ba­bies for pro­longed pe­ri­ods of time."

He said that could be up to three to five years to see how the ba­bies de­vel­op and how they achieve the mile­stones that a full-term ba­by will achieve. Cere­bral pal­sy and blind­ness were part of the de­vel­op­men­tal mile­stones.

Ali said, "This is not some­thing where the ba­bies go home and every­thing is al­right. They would need con­tin­u­ous fol­low-ups for at least three to five years to en­sure that they are meet­ing the de­vel­op­men­tal mile­stones and that is as­sum­ing they ne­go­ti­ate this post-de­liv­ery suc­cess­ful­ly." He said it would be dif­fi­cult to say how long they would stay at hos­pi­tal.

It de­pend­ed on their progress and lev­el of sup­port they re­quired. "Cer­tain­ly, they would be mon­i­tored and would on­ly leave the hos­pi­tal when sta­ble and putting on weight and the par­ents could ad­e­quate­ly deal with them at home," he said.

Ali said be­cause of the ex­treme pre­ma­tu­ri­ty the ba­bies would need to have eye ex­ams to en­sure the reti­na is not dam­aged. He al­so said the med­ical com­pli­ca­tions with a moth­er were ex­treme. He said they were ex­treme pri­mar­i­ly be­cause of changes that oc­cur with­in a moth­er's sys­tem such as blood vol­ume and stress­es on her car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem which could be grave dur­ing the preg­nan­cy.

As for the ba­by/ba­bies, Ali said, "These ba­bies, be­cause of their pre-term con­di­tion suf­fer not on­ly a pro­longed phase in the neona­tal unit re­quir­ing ven­ti­la­to­ry or res­pi­ra­to­ry sup­port, but they end up with long-term com­pli­ca­tions.

"They usu­al­ly have long-term med­ical prob­lems which have to be mon­i­tored care­ful­ly."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored