UCSF is Worldwide Leader in Fetal Surgery!

With the New Year comes exciting new opportunities, including the opening of the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital at Mission Bay. The new children’s hospital is part of the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay, which officially opened on February 1, 2015 after more than ten years of planning and construction! The UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital is proud to be the first and only children’s hospital in San Francisco, in addition to being the undisputed world leader in fetal diagnosis and treatment.

The Fetal Treatment Center at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital is a world leader in diagnosing and treating birth defects before delivery. Most birth defects are best managed after the child is born, but an increasing number of conditions can be corrected before birth to prevent devastating consequences. That’s where we come in.

UCSF is considered the birthplace of congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) surgery as it was the first in the world to successfully perform open fetal surgery on a baby still in the womb three decades ago. Today, we have more experience fetal surgery and endoscopic fetal intervention — less invasive interventions that allow us to avoid making an incision in the uterus — than any other institution worldwide.

Watch this video, featuring UCSF Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Radiologist and Co-Founder of the UCSF Fetal Treatment Center Dr. Roy Filly, about a patient named Miles and how a type of surgery innovated at UCSF saved his life before he was even born.