New Tools and Techniques

Before any human surgeries were done there were lots of animal experiments culminating in nonhuman primate experiments and we learned a lot from these things. In the past, in order to do fetal surgery it had to be invasive so they had to open up the uterus and that required the use of a stapler.  They used a hemostatic stapler that would divide the uterine tissue in a hemostatic way and some of the metal staples stayed behind in which it acted like IUD.  Thus, monkey couldn’t get pregnant again so that led to Mike and others working with industry creating a device that we still use now which is absorbable staples. The monkey were able to get pregnant subsequently that has been borne out in human experiment that fetal surgery and fetoscopic surgery (minimally invasive surgery guided by fetoscopy and sonography) did not decrease fertility.