A 27-year-old Czech woman gave birth to a baby girl in August after she had been brain dead for 117 days. The child is doing very well, the medical team announced on Monday.
Incredible but true. While she was in a state of brain death 117 days ago, a 27-year-old Czech woman gave birth to a baby girl in August. The child is in exceptionally good health given the tragic conditions of his birth, the medical team announced on Monday 2 September.
In 2016, Eva Votavova was diagnosed with an arteriovenous malformation of the brain. On April 21, 2019, she was found unconscious at her home, 16 weeks pregnant. After a major cerebral hemorrhage, “she stopped breathing in the evening then (…) was declared brain dead”, explains at a press conference Roman Gal, chief anesthesiologist at the University Hospital. of Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic.
While the young woman is in the hospital, doctors are keeping her organs working, focusing on her heart, lungs and kidneys, while monitoring the growth of the fetus. A therapist moves mum’s legs to stimulate walking and nurses talk to the baby on the way as her grandmother reads her stories.
The unplugged mother just after birth
A hundred days later, the child is born, about a month premature. She is a girl, she is 41 cm tall and weighs 2.13 kg. Her father calls her Eliska. “This is among the highest fetal weight and maturity achieved for a baby born to a brain-dead mother in global data,” Gal said.
A few hours after the birth of the child, the system that kept the mother alive is disconnected. Eliska then stays two weeks in the hospital and then her father takes her home where she meets her big brother. She is now breastfed by her paternal great aunt.
As incredible as this story is, these kinds of events do happen. And it is possible because, “the brain is dead, but the body is not dead (…) It provides the vital functions essential to the fetus”, affirms Professor Israel Nisand, head of the gynecological department of Strasbourg hospitals. at RTL.
Uncertain consequences
However, when there is no contact between the mother and the child, if the birth of the latter can take place, “we are unable to say what the consequences will be”, he adds, impressed with the good Eliska’s state of health at birth given the conditions.
This story is reminiscent of that of Marlise Munoz, also 16 weeks pregnant, when she suffered a pulmonary embolism in Texas (United States). At the time of the tragedy, in 2014, his story had set America on fire. Indeed, while the doctors assured that the fetus was not viable and that his relatives wanted to let them both die in peace, the law in force prohibited it.
Indeed, a law of the State of Texas dating from 1999 and signed by the governor and future American president Georges W. Bush establishes that “no one can stop or suspend life-sustaining treatment on a pregnant patient”. After months of legal battle, the husband finally got the young woman to be disconnected. The family then welcomed the end of a “long and unbearable ordeal”.
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