2008-08-20 20:30:04 -

- WHO: St. Joseph's Children's Hospital at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center is one of a few children's hospitals in the nation to perform a minimally invasive surgical procedure on infants to treat craniosynostosis, a birth defect characterized by the premature closure of one or more of the spaces between the bones in the skull.

WHAT: St. Joseph's Children's

Hospital invites the media to tape the craniosynostosis surgery of three-month old, Bassam Odatallah. Bassam has a very severe case of craniosynostosis. His father, Zuhan Odatallah, is giving the media permission to tape the surgery in hopes that it will alert other parents about the importance of early detection of craniosynostosis in their infants before five months so they can benefit from this minimally invasive procedure.

With the newer, less invasive surgery, St. Joseph's Children's Hospital physicians, Richard Anderson, M.D., a pediatric neurosurgeon and Silvio Podda, M.D., a pediatric craniofacial plastic surgeon, perform the procedure in approximately one to two hours compared to the three to seven hours of major skull reconstruction surgery required using the traditional technique. The new procedure is performed using an endoscope which results in shorter hospital stays, reduced need for blood transfusions and smaller incisions and scaring. The new procedure can only be performed on infants between two months and five or six months of age.

WHEN: Friday, August 22, 2008 at 1:00 pm

WHERE: St. Joseph's Children's Hospital at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center

703 Main Street, Paterson, NJ

WHY: Craniosynostosis occurs in about one in 5,000 newborns and affects males two times more than females. To allow for a newborn's quickly growing brain, the skull is made up of several bone plates that are held together by fibrous-like material called sutures. Normally, these sutures remain open to let the brain grow evenly in all directions. However, with craniosynostosis, one or more of these sutures can close prematurely before birth or at any time before the brain stops growing. This can result in a misshapen head or face and in a small percentage of children it can result in elevated intracranial pressure, which can prevent the brain from developing normally and cause developmental delays or cognitive problems.

Please contact in advance for media credentialing.

St. Joseph's Children's Hospital
Celia Bloom, 302-655-1552