A baby in Alabama has broken the Guinness World Records as the most premature baby to survive, after being born at 21 weeks of gestation.
The baby, Curtis Means and his twin sister, C'Asya, were born on July 5 2020, at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) hospital. Having barely 21 weeks and 1 day gestational age at birth, they were given a less than 1% chance of surviving. This means that they were 19 weeks premature.
Dr. Brian Sims, Professor of pediatrics at the UAB who was the on-call physician when the twins' mother, Michelle Butler, arrived at the hospital, said in a statement released by the hospital:
"Numbers show that babies born so young have little to no chances of survival. We have never been able to bring a baby that young to the neonatal intensive care unit, so [Curtis] was literally the first of his kind. We were in uncharted territory."
Curtis's twin sister C'Asya did not make it and died a day following her birth.
Curtis was able to breathe without a ventilator after 3 months in the intensive care unit.
Assistant professor in the Division of Neonatology, Dr. Colm Travers, who helped care for Curtis, said in the statement:
"Curtis defied all scientific odds."
At birth, Curtis only weighed 14.8 ounces (420 grams), which is approximately 1/7 of the average weight of a healthy full-term baby.
Curtis was discharged from the hospital 9 months after he was born but still had to take medication and required the use of a feeding tube and bittled oxygen.
[Based on reporting by: science alert]
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