'Wonder drug' saved Sophie
Alyssa Braithwaith
AAP
NEWS.com.au
__________
A new blood clotting drug that helped save former Wallaby captain Phil Kearns' infant daughter has raised hopes that Sydney youngster Sophie Delezio can win her second fight for life.
Sophie, now five, was badly injured when a car slammed into her pram on a pedestrian crossing on Sydney's northern beaches yesterday evening and is in Sydney's Children's Hospital in a critical but stable condition.
The child so shockingly burned in December 2003 when a car crashed into her daycare centre, this time suffered a broken jaw and shoulder bone, bruising to her head, numerous rib fractures and bleeding around her left lung.
But a so-called "wonder drug" – NovoSeven – only recently available in Australia helped stabilise her condition in the critical early stages of treatment.
It is the same drug used when Kearns' daughter Andie, only 19 months old at the time, suffered life-threatening abdominal injuries when she was accidentally run over by her father in the driveway of the family home last October.
Sydney Childrens Hospital's assistant director of clinical operations, Jonny Taitz, told a press conference this morning that Sophie had been given NovoSeven to help stop her bleeding internally.
NovoSeven is based on a naturally occurring protein in the blood involved in coagulation. It is used primarily in haemophiliacs, and has been used by the US military to limit blood loss in badly injured people and in some hospital trauma units.
Mar 06, 2006
Alyssa Braithwaith
AAP
NEWS.com.au
__________
A new blood clotting drug that helped save former Wallaby captain Phil Kearns' infant daughter has raised hopes that Sydney youngster Sophie Delezio can win her second fight for life.
Sophie, now five, was badly injured when a car slammed into her pram on a pedestrian crossing on Sydney's northern beaches yesterday evening and is in Sydney's Children's Hospital in a critical but stable condition.
The child so shockingly burned in December 2003 when a car crashed into her daycare centre, this time suffered a broken jaw and shoulder bone, bruising to her head, numerous rib fractures and bleeding around her left lung.
But a so-called "wonder drug" – NovoSeven – only recently available in Australia helped stabilise her condition in the critical early stages of treatment.
It is the same drug used when Kearns' daughter Andie, only 19 months old at the time, suffered life-threatening abdominal injuries when she was accidentally run over by her father in the driveway of the family home last October.
Sydney Childrens Hospital's assistant director of clinical operations, Jonny Taitz, told a press conference this morning that Sophie had been given NovoSeven to help stop her bleeding internally.
NovoSeven is based on a naturally occurring protein in the blood involved in coagulation. It is used primarily in haemophiliacs, and has been used by the US military to limit blood loss in badly injured people and in some hospital trauma units.
Mar 06, 2006
