Dr. Guntupalli led a 10-hour surgery without breaks to save the mother of three
While pregnant with her third child, Caroline Nguyen learned she has a placenta irregularity know as placenta percreta and that if she was not careful she could not make it though the pregnancy.
Placenta percreta occurs when the placenta not only grows into the wall of the uterus, but extends to nearby organs, such as the bladder in Caroline’s case. The placenta should grow in the top of the uterus (womb) and supply the baby with food and oxygen through the umbilical cord.
University of Colorado Hospital hosts one of the few formal placenta percreta programs in the country. Dr. Saketh Guntupalli leads the team along with help from maternal fetal medicine specialists in a very high risk surgery that can mean life or death.
“Caroline’s case was actually of all the probably 1,000 cases I’ve done at the University of Colorado Hospital, was the hardest case I’ve done … ever,” said Dr. Guntupalli.
The baby was first removed via c-section, a process that took 20 minutes. What followed was a nearly 10 hour-long surgery where Dr. Guntupalli and the placenta percreta team performed a radical hysterectomy where they removed the uterus, the posterior or back part of the bladder, as well as all the surrounding tissue in the pelvis.
Caroline woke up to news of a 5 pound 3 ounce baby girl.