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Interviewer: Dr. Stephen Jay Fenton is a pediatric surgeon and also an expert in congenital diaphragmatic hernia. So, most of the time, it's diagnosed before the woman has given birth. So, this diagnosis comes in, what are some considerations that the woman, the mother, the family are going to have to do at this point?

Dr. Fenton: Once this woman has diagnosis they need to be referred to a maternal fetal medicine physician, so someone who deals with high risk pregnancies. And one of the things associated with that is that they need to be followed closely during their pregnancy. One is to ensure the safe delivery of the child and then also in preparation as far as what will happen once the child is born.

I think it's important for the mother to know that this is something that will require treatment for a long time after the child is born. So I typically would say three, four, to six months afterwards, that child will need to be in hospital that takes care of these types of kids. And so sometimes it might require relocation or making sure they have a support system away from their house. For example, if they live quite a bit away from the children's hospital that deals with this specialty, they may need to start thinking about the or finding some other place that they can live.

CDH Life Expectancy & Treatment

Interviewer: Wow, so this diagnosis is a serious thing.

Dr. Fenton: Yeah, I mean over the past 10 to 20 years the survival rate has improved, but it still is one of those diseases that takes a lot as far as to treat the child once they're born and then afterwards to help the child continue to grow.

Interviewer: What's the conversation that you have with these families? Take me through that conversation, some of their concerns, their questions, the things that you tell them that are important to consider.

Dr. Fenton: So, after getting past the basic questions of what is a diaphragmatic hernia and how is it treated, the things that I really focus on are we need to find out a little bit more about the child. So, one of the things that we'll get when they come to our office is what we call predictive or prognostic predictors.

So, a lot of times they will have already undergone ultrasounds, several ultrasounds, to look further at the child. One of which is of the heart, so a fetal echocardiogram. We want to know whether the child has a congenital heart disease as well because that does complicate things when the child has not only a diaphragmatic hernia, but has congenital heart disease as well. They are at a much higher risk of not surviving.

And it also limits some of the things we can do, especially as far as the ECMO or the heart lung bypass, if the child has a structural heart defect we can't put them on ECMO. So, the families need to know that.

Additionally we want to know what their chances of going on ECMO are and what their survival ability is. So, we look at these different things. One is the lung to head ratio, which is obtained by the ultrasound. Then the other is the total lung volume which can be obtained by the MRI. And those, depending on what the lungs look like, so the ratio of the lungs to the heads and/or the observe to expect of total lung volumes.

We can give parents the percentage of whether their child is going to require ECMO support and/or what their survivability is. And so the parents, when I talk to them, I almost talk to them much more about the support that the child will receive before and after repair, than the repair itself. Because the repair is really a step and only one of many steps in the care of the kid once he's born.

Interviewer: Wow. So, how do you help parents take all this information that you just talked about, head-lung ratios, and how do you make them make sense of what they should do at that point?

Dr. Fenton: Well, I think it's hard, especially for the initial visit, because a lot of information is given and so we will talk to them upfront and then we'll see them once they come into the hospital again to give birth. And talk to them once the child is born as well, and we can gauge. Obviously all of these are predictive.

They're not definitive and so it's after the child is born that we see how they're doing, that we kind of give them a little bit more of a definitive plan as to whether we feel like the child's going to need ECMO or whether we feel like when the child can be repaired. And some of the consequences as far as neurologic cardiac long-term pulmonary support. A lot of times we can't necessarily give them that until we are in the midst of taking care of the child.

CDH Support for Parents

Interviewer: What options do parents have at this point?

Dr. Fenton: I honestly refer my patients out to websites as well. "I feel like I've given you a lot of information. We want you to know more." There are support groups, is one, as far as the parents can Google. I also had them look at WebMD. I've actually found most parents to be very well informed when they come in even to the prenatal interview. So the very first kind of clinic visit that we have, I found that most parents who come in have already read up quite a bit about it.

Interviewer: Yeah, because they were told about the diagnosis and they're very curious and want to know.

Dr. Fenton: Exactly. And I think that helps. I mean having the parents be informed already about what it is and having specific questions as far as okay, so, tell me about ECMO. Tell me about reflux, and tell me about when you're going to do the repair and what the repair options are. It helps with the conversation already.

Interviewer Do some parents at this point after they get this information choose not to continue the pregnancy if they think... if you think I should say, it's going to be really bad?

Dr. Fenton: Some do. Yeah. I mean some will discuss options of whether to be able to continue the pregnancy or not. Obviously depending on the gestational age of the child, that might not be an option anymore. More often what is talked about is palliative care. So, meaning how aggressive to treat the child afterwards and how much should be pursued.

I would tell you that most parents say, "I want everything done. We'll go forward and certainly want to help the child, after they're born in whatever way is possible." But there are some times where we can't do that. And so I think it's important to have that discussion before, of what are the limits and the possibility of needing to do either palliation immediately after the child is born. And/or when have we exhausted all medical means to help this child.

Life After CDH Treatment

Interviewer: So, after a diagnosis of CDH, can a child live a normal life after you've done what you needed to do to rehabilitate?

Dr. Fenton: Yes, I think that's the key. We've done what we needed to do rehabilitate or to treat the child, and obviously there is a pretty high mortality associated with CDH now. It has improved greatly over the past two decades. But it's still a serious disorder. There are some kids that have lungs that are so small and so underdeveloped that we're not able to treat those.

Now, the children that we are able to treat, they can go on and live a very productive lives. Some of them may have some challenges secondary to the treatment themselves. They might need oxygen support. They might not be able to exert themselves as much as a consequence of treating their underdeveloped lungs. But most of them can go on and live great lives even if they require some support.

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