Medical team saves baby during mission Published Jan. 28, 2003 By 1st Lt. Carla Pampe Joint Task Force Bravo Public Affairs SOTO CANO AIR BASE, Honduras (AFPN) -- Members of a U. S. military medical team in Honduras performing eye surgeries and exams found themselves taking on another role Jan. 19 when they saved the life of a newborn.The San Antonio-based team, composed of people from Lackland Air Force Base's Wilford Hall Medical Center and Fort Sam Houston's Brooke Army Medical Center, was participating in an optometry and ophthalmology medical readiness and training exercise Jan. 10 to 20 at the Hospital Del Sur in Choluteca, Honduras.Team members were performing eye surgery when someone from the hospital's staff rushed in and asked for help."They had done an emergency (cesarean) section, and the pediatrician came into the operating room while we were doing surgery and asked for our help with a baby who was unresponsive," said Lt. Col (Dr.) Robert Smith, team chief of the exercise team.Smith and Lt. Col. (Dr.) August Pasquale took the baby to a recovery room and began giving it oxygen and performing CPR.At the time of the emergency, Maj. (Dr.) Kathy Weesner, a staff anesthesiologist from Wilford Hall, and Lt. Col. (Dr.) James McLane, a pediatrician from Brooke, had finished their day's work and left the hospital."Dr. McLane and I were in a van headed back to our hotel when we got a phone call asking us to come back to the hospital right away," Weesner said. "When we returned, the ophthalmology team was already on the scene. The baby was just lifeless, very dusky in color, and they were desperately searching for oxygen for him."Weesner and McLane immediately joined in the resuscitation efforts."He was pretty close to dead," McLane said. "I think the local pediatrician had just accepted that he was going to die. Not because he didn't have the skills to save him, but they just don't have the resources. With the equipment our team already had there, we were able to help."With the baby's heart rate, oxygen level and temperature dangerously low, the team raced against time to revive him."The first thing we had to do was clear the baby's airway," McLane said. "We got a breathing tube in him and got him oxygenated."Then, McLane inserted an IV into the baby's umbilical cord so they could give him fluids to raise his blood pressure."Being a pediatrician, that was a special skill Dr. McLane had," Weesner said. "I would have had to find another place to insert the IV, like his hand, which might have taken longer. We initiated all the resuscitation measures we could, and then we had to improvise. We heated IV bags and packed them around the baby to raise his temperature."After more than two hours of work, the team was able to stabilize the baby and return him to the care of the Honduran medical staff."On the way to take the baby to the neonatal intensive care unit, the mother was in the recovery room, and we stopped by with the baby so she could kiss him," McLane said. "Our only feeling of success at the time was that the mom got to see her baby alive, because we really weren't sure he'd make it through the night."When the team returned the next morning, they were given the good news that the baby survived the night. Soon, the boy, whose mother had named Eduardo, was with his mom, breast feeding and doing well."We were just so happy," Weesner said. "We fought such an uphill battle to save him, and seeing him in his mother's arms just two days later was amazing."It was just a matter of the right people being in the right place at the right time. It was awesome." (Courtesy of Air Education and Training Command News Service)