In an unorthodox mode of treatment, doctors have used surgical superglue to save the life of a 20-day-old baby girl in Kansas by stopping the bleeding in her brain.
Ashlyn Julian was born healthy on May 16 but her parents soon realised something was wrong with her.
"She was probably around 10 days old, and she was sleeping a lot, and I understand that babies sleep a lot, but to the point that you couldn't wake her up to feed her," said Ashlyn's mother, Gina Julian.
In a few days, Ashlyn went from being a quiet baby to one who was screaming and throwing up, Gina said.
Ashlyn's parents rushed her to the emergency room at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City twice, where doctors noticed her fontanel (the soft spot on a newborn's head) was raised and conducted an ultrasound, CNN reported.
Ashlyn was transferred to the University of Kansas Hospital, where doctors discovered the she had an almond-sized aneurysm lurking in the middle of her brain.
"We did not know what the right answer was. This was not a textbook case. If you try to treat the baby without closing the aneurysm most of those babies can't survive. So we had a strong reason to develop a plan to close the aneurysm," said Dr Koji Ebersole, an endovascular neurosurgeon.
After studying MRI images of Ashlyn's brain, Ebersole was fairly certain that he would be able to image the aneurysm itself using an angiogram - a process that allows doctors to view the flow of different blood vessels in the body.
Based on the location of Ashlyn's aneurysm, he decided to take an unorthodox course of treatment.
Ebersole decided to close the aneurysm using surgical superglue - a method previously utilised only on adults.
Because bleeding in the brain is so rare in infants, there aren't even tools for the procedure.
So Ebersole improvised, using a micro-catheter as thin as a strand of hair inserted into Ashlyn's neck to access the aneurysm and deposit the glue.
The minimally invasive, groundbreaking procedure worked. Just a day after her aneurysm was eradicated, Ashlyn's breathing tube was removed.
"Oh, we're thrilled! The breathing tube was taken out the very next day. I did not know that she'd be ready that fast, and I think she's been making steady strides since, so we're all very happy," Ebersole said.
