Doctors at Clalit Health Services’ Beilinson Hospital have performed Israel’s first intrauterine surgery to treat a rare tumor that developed on the placenta and threatened the life of an unborn baby.
The patient, who was 25 weeks pregnant, was referred to Clalit-Beilinson Hospital after a routine anatomy scan revealed a tumor growing on the surface of the placenta.
An ultrasound examination showed that the tumor had developed on the placenta, an organ rich in blood vessels and essential to the fetus’s blood supply. The tumor caused severe changes in fetal blood circulation and led to heart failure, placing the fetus in immediate danger.
Due to the rapid deterioration in the baby’s condition, the medical team decided to perform an emergency fetal surgery, the first procedure of its kind ever carried out in Israel. The operation was led by Dr. Yuval Gielchinsky, Director of the Fetal Medicine Center at Clalit-Beilinson, together with Kineret Tenenbaum, Head of the Twin Pregnancy Clinic.
According to Dr. Gielchinsky, placental tumors do not always interfere with pregnancy and in many cases develop slowly without requiring treatment. However, in rare and severe cases, they can pose a major threat to both the fetus and the mother, potentially causing fetal heart failure, anemia, low platelet levels, extreme excess amniotic fluid, and even preeclampsia.
“In advanced stages of pregnancy, delivery can sometimes be the solution," he explained. “But in this case, the patient was only 25 weeks pregnant. The only remaining option was an endoscopic fetal intervention, which is only possible when the tumor is located in an accessible area of the placenta, as it was in this case."
During the surgery, the medical team entered the uterus, identified the blood vessels feeding the tumor, and sealed them using a cauterization technique, effectively cutting off the tumor’s blood supply from the placenta.
Following the procedure, the mother was hospitalized for monitoring in the maternal fetal medicine unit. She was discharged home earlier this week and will continue follow up care through Beilinson Hospital’s Fetal Medicine Clinic.