Written by Pathi Venkata Thadhagath
In a rare medical scenario, the life of a 3-month baby girl was saved by freezing her to slow down the high heart beat which was abnormal, reported The Times of India. The baby was born in Anantapur town of Andhra Pradesh and brought to Bengaluru for better treatment.
According to the report, the new born baby was diagnosed with a Supraventricular Tachycardia(SVT), where the heartbeat is abnormally high. In this case, the heart beat is around 250 beats per minute, which is much higher than normal 110 to 160 beats per minute. The doctors in the hometown of the baby’s parents had referred them to go to Bengaluru for better treatment. But the treatment was started at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit(NISCU) of Motherhood hospitals at Chikkaballapur of Karnataka, which is in between Anantapur and Bengaluru.
The baby was then shifted through an ‘NISCU on wheels’ to Bengaluru. The report also said that doctors gave three doses of adenosine, a recommended drug to bring the heart beat down which failed to work. After shifting her to hospital, three more medicines were administered to her but the cardiac echo, ECG and other blood tests did not show any improvement. The regular shock treatment was also given which went in vain
Later, an anecdotal evidence of a case in United Kingdom was taken as a reference and doctors decided to freeze her, with the consent of her parents. The treatment which is called as total body cooling treatment was started where the baby was cooled down by wrapping a jacket around her. This has brought the body temperature down to 33.5-degree Celsius to from 37 degrees Celsius which eventually lowered the heart beat to normal.
The baby however, was successfully discharged from the hospital after a week of treatment, said the publication.
