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Susan Torres

Deborah Condon, irishhealth.com, reports:

A brain-dead woman, who was kept on a life support machine for almost three months to allow her unborn child to develop, has given birth to a baby girl.

Mrs Susan Torres (26) gave birth to Susan Anne Catherine Torres on August 2 by Caesarean section in Virginia, America. The baby, who is two months premature, weighed just one pound and 13 ounces and measured 13.5 inches long.

Mrs Torres, a researcher at the American National Institutes of Health, collapsed on May 7 of this year. She was rushed to hospital where she was diagnosed with stage four melanoma (cancer) and was declared brain dead, with no hope of recovery.

Mrs Torres, already a mother of a two-year-old son, was 17 weeks pregnant at the time. Doctors told her husband, Jason, that while there was no hope of survival for his wife, there was a chance that the foetus would survive if she was kept alive artificially.

Both Mr Torres and his wife’s parents agreed that this is what she would have wanted.

A statement from both families stated that there were no complications during the delivery and the baby is ‘doing well and is being monitored in the neonatal intensive care unit of Virginia Hospital Centre’.

No information on Mrs Torres’ condition has been released at this time.