Based on laboratory animal experimentation, antenatal myelomeningocele repair was originally attempted as a measure to prevent injury to the exposed spinal cord by toxic amniotic fluid. The hope that antenatal repair would protect lower extremity function has not been realized in the initial experiences at Vanderbilt and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. But investigators made the unexpected observation that the fetal Chiari malformation regresses after antenatal repair and that infants subsequently seem need CSF shunt insertion less frequently than expected.
