A pregnancy should last between 38 and 40 weeks to ensure that the baby is ready to reach the world, but there are many small premature babies, including those called extreme premature babies.
Although the scientific advances improved the chances of these babies, these could be increased even more thanks to the development of an artificial uterus that until now worked successfully in tests with lambs.
Artificial uterus, a hope for premature babies
A baby born at 23 weeks of gestation has a 30% and 50% chance of survival, but if he does have a high chance of suffering complications, scientists are looking for ways to help them.
Specialists from the Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in the United States developed the first artificial uterus that mimics the conditions in which a baby is found in the womb.
This device, which looks like a plastic bag, contains in its interior a liquid that imitates the amniotic fluid, in addition to obtaining all the necessary nutrients to develop in a relatively similar way as it would without it being in the body of its mother.
The main problem of small premature infants is the immaturity of their lungs that prevent them from breathing on their own outside the protective area of ??the womb, if they are in the artificial womb they will continue to obtain the necessary oxygen from the amniotic fluid that circulates from the outside to the inside the bag and vice versa, replacing as necessary.
The umbilical cord of babies, that which allows them to receive what they need from their mother, is connected to an external machine that simulates the characteristics and functioning of the placenta.
The scientists behind the development of this device that could mark a before and after in neonatal medicine, already tested the artificial uterus in lambs with a level of prematurity similar to that of 23 or 24 weeks of a human baby.
In the case of the lambs, they were able to stay up to 28 days in the artificial womb isolated from the external stimuli of the environment which was also sterile, this allowed them to develop as they would in the body of their mother resulting in healthy lambs and ready to face the world in what would be his second birth.
The next step for American specialists is to adapt the artificial uterus to the size needed by a human, and if all goes well, tests on premature babies could begin in three more years giving hope of survival and quality of life to hundreds of thousands of children. they arrive to the world ahead of time.