Amazing Photo: Mend Birth Defect Unborn Baby

HOUSTON -- The patient, still inside his mother's womb, came into focus on flat screens in darkened operating room. Fingers, toes, the soles of his feet - all exquisite, all perfectly formed. 

But not so his lower back. Smooth skin gave way to an opening that should not have been there, a bare oval exposing a white rim of bone and the nerves of the spinal cord. 

"All right, it's the real deal", said Dr Michael A Belfort, the chairman of obstetrics and gynecology, at Baylor College of Medicine and obstetricians and gynecologist-in-chief of Texas Children's Hospital. 

The fetus, 24 weeks and two days old, less than 2 pounds, was about to have surgery. He had a severe form of spina bifida, in which the backbone and spinal cord do not develop properly. Usually children with this condition cannot walk, and suffer from fluid buildup in the brain,  lack of bladder control and other complications. 

A pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr William Whitehead, joined Dr Belfort at the operating table. Doctors have been performing fetal surgery to correct spina bifida since the 1990s; it's not a cure, but can lessen the degree of disability. 

But now Dr Belfort and Dr Whitehead are testing a new experimental technique - one that some in the field are eager to learn, but that others regard warily, questioning its long-term safety for the fetus. 

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