Twins with rare condition beat the odds at Riley Hospital for Children
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A historic birth happened at Riley Hospital for Children just days ago.
The family and doctors are celebrating two healthy babies who survived the state’s first fetoscopic laser surgery for twins prenatally diagnosed with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome.
It happened while they were still in the womb.
The parents and the Riley Fetal Center Team are thrilled that twins Rachel and Haleigh Koehn are here.
Riley Hospital for Children is the first and only hospital in the state to offer fetal surgery.
“It almost seems unreal just having the twins let alone having these kinds of complications,” the mother of the twins, Rebekah Koehn, said.
“Needless to say we were quite excited to get Rebecca and the babies this far along and have a successful delivery,” Dr. David Streitman, a maternal fetal medicine physician at Riley Children’s Health, said.
Parents Rebekah and Daniel Koehn are now the proud parents of twins Rachel and Haleigh.
On Feb.16, the girls had a miraculous delivery thanks to the help of dozens of staff members. According to Riley Hospital for Children, they arrived via caesarean.
“I was extremely excited for the day to finally be here and I just want to them home, but obviously that’s not a realistic thing,” the father of twins, Daniel Koehan, said.
Currently, the twins are being closely monitored. They are expected to be home by the end of March.
“One baby will push too much blood to the other twin and the other twin will receive all that blood. The one who is receiving all that blood is called the recipient and the one who is giving all that blood is called the donor. If that continues to happen it puts the babies lives at risk,” Dr. Hiba Mustafa, a maternal fetal medicine physician at Riley Children’s Health, said.
In October, at second trimester they were the first to receive the twin-to-twin-transfusion syndrome procedure in their mom’s womb.
Riley Children’s Health says the minimally invasive surgery, endoscopic laser ablation, offers the best chance of having two healthy babies.
“She had the additional factor of selective fetal birth restrictions, which made the surgery a bit more urgent and a bit more complicated. If she had to travel and spend another day getting some place else out-of-state and be evaluated it could have meant the difference between weather one of her babies or both of her babies survive or not,” Streitman said.
“Definitely something that made us turn to God a lot faster and just know that he’s going to take care of it and he’s able to change anything at anytime and with the second surgery we just found that peace,” Rebekah said.
Dr. David Streitman and Dr. Hiba Mustafa, are the maternal fetal medicine physicians who initiated and helped develop the fetal intervention program at Riley.