HADASSAH PHYSICIANS PERFORM FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND PEDIATRIC SURGERY

Sheila R. Vitale is the founder of Living Epistles Ministries and Christ-Centered Kabbalah, both of which are teaching ministries that promote spiritual growth through the distribution of free Christian literature and educational audio lectures. In addition to leading these ministries as a pastor, author, and teacher of Judeo-Christian spiritual philosophy, Sheila Vitale dedicates her time to a number of nonprofit organizations, including Hadassah.

For over a century, Hadassah, also known as the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, has empowered Jewish women to uphold the values of their faith and strengthen the global Jewish community. Evolving over the years to meet the changing needs of Jews around the world, the nonprofit’s activities now include the Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO), a state-of-the-art healthcare and medical research organization based in Jerusalem.

HMO has developed an international reputation for innovation, often taking on extremely challenging cases. Recently, physicians at HMO’s Hadassah University Medical Center conducted a first-of-its-kind surgery to save the life of a newborn baby girl with a rare congenital defect called omphalocele.

Omphalocele causes a fetus’s abdominal organs to develop in an amniotic sac outside of the body, requiring surgery to repair the abnormality following the baby’s birth. Although the severity of this particular case of omphalocele led outside physicians to recommend the termination of the pregnancy, Hadassah senior pediatric surgeon Dr. Dan Arbell conceived a new technique to save the infant’s life. His team used a cone-like medical device known as a “silo,” a tool developed by plastic surgeon Morris Topaz, to arrange and hold the patient’s intestines in place, gradually altering the position of the organs over a three-week period. This multi-step surgical procedure marked the first use of a silo in an omphalocele operation. It yielded excellent results for the baby girl, who is now healing well and eating comfortably.