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The Center for Fetal and Neonatal Medicine

Our Experts Featured on Babies 911(Feature Length: 5:55)
Source: Babies 911 (2008) 
Three families turn to our hospital's Institute for Maternal-Fetal Health for their babies' health. 
The Center for Fetal and Neonatal Medicine is one of the county's most innovative models for the care and treatment of the most complex medical and surgical maternal-fetal and neonatal problems.

It includes the:

Our Center's Structure

 

    The Center for Fetal and Neonatal Medicine is especially ground-breaking in that it is one of the few Centers in the country to treat the fetus as a patient by offering comprehensive prenatal care and information.  The all-inclusive care offered by the Institute for Maternal-Fetal Health (IMFH) enhances health outcomes for expectant mothers with high-risk pregnancies and their unborn children.  This program identifies and treats medical problems in children while they are still in the womb using innovative diagnostic and surgical techniques.

    Newborn and Infant Critical Care Unit (NICCU)

    The Newborn and Infant Critical Care Unit admits critically ill infants up to 52 weeks postnatal age (~3 months after delivery of a term newborn) who require highly specialized medical and nursing care.  Whereas many community hospitals offer a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit capable of caring for premature infants, the most critically ill infants with complex medical and surgical condition are best served at a multidisciplinary institution such as Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.  Indeed, most of these babies typically require multiple complex surgeries and/or specialized medical, respiratory, nursing and other services that our hospital can provide. 

    Baby Caden, Treated for a Terratoma
    Caden McMullin was diagnosed in the womb with a terratoma.  The growth was moving so quickly that it began threatening his life even before he was born.  Three medical teams organized to provide Caden with comprehensive neonatal, surgical, and oncological care to save his young life. 

    Institute for Maternal-Fetal Health (IMFH)

    At the Institute for Maternal and Fetal Health (IMFH), faculty from the USC Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine provide a full scope of diagnostic and treatment services to fetuses and mothers with high-risk pregnancies in close collaboration with the Divisions of Cardiology and Medical Genetics, and several other subspecialty programs, at Childrens Hospital, and with the Divisions within the Department of Surgery at Childrens Hospital.  More than 20 pediatric medical and surgical subspecialty programs and support services are involved in the provision of state-of-the art, compassionate and coordinated care along the continuum of prenatal, perinatal and postnatal medicine, serving the most complex and critically ill fetuses and neonates in the Los Angeles region, the Southwestern United States and beyond.