Cassian was still in his mother’s womb when an ultrasound revealed something life-threatening: his airways were blocked, and his lungs were filling with fluid that they could not drain on their own.
At Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital in Florida, Keishera and her doctor faced a decision that no manual fully resolved. At 25 weeks of gestation, a surgical team brought the fetus’s head, neck, and shoulders out of the amniotic sac—without disconnecting him from the umbilical cord or his mother—and placed a catheter in his trachea to drain the fluid that had accumulated in his lungs. They then returned him to the uterus so Keishera could remain pregnant for several more weeks.
Cassian was born in August 2025 and is doing well today. The doctors who operated on him say that this procedure, unprecedented to date, could become the difference between life and death for other babies with the same diagnosis.