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(Archive/stock image. For illustrative purposes only).
For a month, doctors at the Max Peralta Hospital in the city of Cartago, located east of Costa Rica’s capital San Jose, had been keeping a brain-dead woman on artificial life support in hopes of allowing her unborn child a chance at life.
On February 8th, doctors and family received their wish, as a team of more than a dozen specialists successfully delivered the woman’s baby boy, Deylan Isaac Guillen.
Still, no one was sure if the baby boy would survive. Deylan spent the first seven days of his life breathing with the assistance of ventilators. The baby, born at 30 weeks gestation, weighed 1,355 grams – just shy 3 of three pounds.
On Wednesday, however – just 10 days after baby Deylan was delivered – doctors said that Deylan’s prognosis is positive, and he is on the road to recovery. The infant is now able to breathe on his own, and is being fed with oral formula.
Elation and grief
While the prognosis for baby Deylan is positive, the child will unfortunately never have a chance to know his biological mother. His mother, 22-year-old Raquel Guillen was disconnected from life support shortly after a team of specialists delivered baby Deylan by cesarean.
When she was six months pregnant, doctors discovered a tumor in Raquel Guillen’s brain after she was admitted to the hospital suffering from neurological problems.
Doctors operated the next day, but the surgery ultimately proved unsuccessful. On January 13th, the woman was declared brain dead after suffering from massive intracranial bleeding.
“Miracle child”
Doctors and family have described baby Deylan as a “miracle child,” and their assessment is no mistake.
According to a study published in the medical journal BMC medicine, in the 28-year period between 1982 and 2010, there were only 30 reported cases – worldwide – of maternal brain death in which the pregnant mother could be sustained with artificial life support. Amongst those 30 cases, there were only 12 in which a viable child was delivered.
Baby Deylan marks the first such case ever recorded in Costa Rica.
