HEALTH COACH - New York triplets get the same surgery for a rare skull condition

HEALTH COACH -

 New York triplets get the same surgery for a rare skull condition  


Three New York infants recover after having undergone the same operation to treat a rare birth defect that has affected their skull.
 

Last October, Amy and Mike Howard welcomed their three sons Hunter, Jackson and Kaden. While Hunter and Jackson are identical, Kaden is fraternal.
 

Soon after the birth of the infants, the doctors noticed that something seemed wrong with their skull: they were malformed or pinched. This was a classic sign of a rare birth defect called craniosynostosis.
 

"After their birth, you could say that their heads were a little badly shaped, deformed," Amy Howard told reporters on Monday.
 
 
   The boys go home and meet their milestones.
  
 The defect is characterized by premature melting of the skull which can be dangerous for infants, which grow rapidly. Without the flexible spots in the skull that allow the brain to grow, an infant with craniosynostosis is at risk for intracranial pressure and developmental delays, according to the National Institutes of Health.

"This can result in consequences for the brain by increasing the pressure inside their head," said Dr. David Chesler, assistant professor of neurosurgery at Stony Brook Medicine, at ABC News's WABC-TV subsidiary.
 

Doctors at the Stony Brook Children's Hospital determined that Hunter and Jackson both had a version called sagittal synostosis, where the top of the skull was fused, resulting in a long, narrow skull, according to the Clinic Mayo.
 

Kaden had a less common version called metabolic synostosis where the front of the skull is melted, giving the forehead a pinched look.
 

"We were crazy," Mike Howard told reporters Monday of the experience. "But Stony Brook, they were so incredible."
 

About 1 out of 2,100 babies are born with the disease, according to hospital officials. However, after reviewing the medical literature, Chesler found that this could be the first time that triplets have all been diagnosed with the disease. He estimates that the probabilities of this phenomenon are around "1 in a few hundred trillions".
 

"You'd be sooner struck by lightening or winning Powerball by a long shot on that," he told ABC News.
 

To correct the problem, Chesler and other staff members had to remove one part of each infant 's skull surgically last January, so that no pressure would develop in the skull and harm the brain . Because the boys were so small, the team was able to perform the procedure endoscopically. This minimally invasive procedure involved small incisions through which they remove the band of bone where the skull is melted, according to Chesler. He explained that the endoscopic procedure requires much less time in the operating room from about 90 minutes to three hours compared to a traditional open skull operation that can take between three hours and eight hours. Recovery time is also much shorter and infants are less likely to need a blood transfusion.
 

"The risks of the overall operation are lower than the open operation and the results are just as good," explained Chesler. Infants must keep a helmet for at least six months to keep the skull in the correct shape and prevent refusal.
 

Now the triplets are coming home and responding to their developmental stages four months after their surgery, according to the Stony Brook Children's Hospital. The only sign that boys have undergone surgery on their skulls are the large plastic helmets that they still have to wear. One expects them to be finished with these helmets in a few months.
 

"The boys are great, they are really good," Chesler told ABC News.