Family visit Royal Manchester Children's Hospital to thank staff who saved their daughter
Video report by Granada Reports journalist Jennifer Buck
A family has made an 'emotional' return to a hospital to thank the staff who helped treat their baby daughter with a rare genetic condition.
Tallulah Chambers was born with an extremely rare condition where dangerously high levels of insulin were being produced in her body, called congenital hyperinsulinism.
Tallulah spent the first three months of her life at Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, who helped treat her. She has now returned as a healthy one year old with her Mum Sarah to thank the consultants who treated her.
Sarah says it was "quite emotional" going back to the Hospital, but "lovely to see everyone again and so important to pass on our heartfelt thanks."
Sarah said: "She presented with really low blood sugar and they were unable to raise that blood sugar so needed an IV infusion so she went straight to NICU, that's when I really started to worry, she was born very small, so we were aware that something was wrong quite quickly"
Congenital hyperinsulinism needs to be caught and treated early or can lead to brain damage and other complications.
Royal Manchester Children's Hospital is one of only six places in the World where a high tech scan can take place, for Tallulah it pinpointed the exact position of a lesion in her pancreas.
Dr Indi Banerjee is the Consultant who treated Tallulah, said: "She has a very specific condition where only one part of the pancreas is effected and that's called focal hyper insulinism and the good thing about that is you can actually get to it with the pet scan and doing surgery and if you can remove it she will be cured"
Dr Rakesh Sajjan is a Consultant in Nuclear Medicine and explains why the PET scan machine is so important: "It tells us the structure of the pancreas etc so we then fuse the pet and the CT together and then we will be able to look at where the focus is exactly and that helps the surgeon to do the surgery"
Before the specialist scanner arrived in Manchester, North West children were sent to Berlin for the expert analysis
After the scan Tallulah went though 7 hours of surgery. Sarah says the relief was overwhelming and she is now a happy and healthy baby.
"When the words, she's cured it took us a long time for that to sink in and to process it because she was incredibly poorly at the start and you know we were doing blood sugars every fifteen minutes so it was a lot to take in, but she is now a bundle of joy and full of mischief"
Indi Banerjee said: "I think Tallulah is a delightful little girl and we're very pleased with her outcome.
"The scan and the surgery is a complicated process but the outcome is a normal childhood. No checking blood sugars all the time. It’s revolutionary.”
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