Our next Twilight will be held on Wednesday May 22nd and here we will be focusing on ‘Fetal Therapy at Twilight’. This will cover some of the current, and future, opportunities to treat the baby while still unborn. Some procedures which would have seemed like science fiction only a few decades ago are now considered standard of care. And we continue to reach for new horizons to give our babies the best possible start to life in their all-important first 9 months.
Our Speakers and Topics
We will kick off with:
‘A word from our patients’! Diana Nicholls was expecting an uncomplicated twin pregnancy when Twin to Twin transfusion supervened, culminating in fetal surgery, multiple procedures, preterm birth and a long journey for her beautiful girls in the nursery. Diana will anchor our session by sharing her experience- what went well, what was a struggle, what is her ‘message in a bottle’ for all of us working in this field.
Then our very own Dr Alison Fung will talk about ‘Fetal anemia and intrauterine transfusion’. Ali is the clinical director of MFM at Mercy and is our #1 ‘go to’ for the patients with suspected fetal anemia requiring transfusion. She will be YOUR #1 ‘go to’ for all your questions regarding iso-immunisation, surveillance after parvovirus seroconversion, the when and how of intrauterine transfusion and what the long term holds for these babies.
Following this, Dr Mark Teoh, Head of the Fetal Management Unit and Surgical Director of the Victorian Fetal Therapy Service will be covering ‘Monochorionic twins and surgical intervention’. We all think about twin to twin transfusion when we consider MC twins and this will indeed be a focus of this talk. But Mark will also touch on the complexities of Twin Reversed Arterial Perfusion Sequence, selective FGR in MC twins and more.
Finally, we have an extra special guest joining us all the way from sunny London! Professor Anna David, from University College London, is an extraordinary MFM clinician and internationally recognized researcher in Fetal Growth Restriction. She is spearheading the might EVERREST consortium focusing on outcomes and interventions for one of the most difficult clinical dilemmas in perinatal medicine- early onset fetal growth restriction . The interventional EVERREST trial will evaluate whether vascular endothelial growth factor gene therapy can improve outcome in severe early-onset fetal growth restriction. It is a huge privilege to have her joining us, and she has kindly agreed to cover‘Management and therapies for early onset FGR- and postnatal care and planning for the next pregnancy’
