ABSTRACT
Perhaps the first demonstration that a surgical procedure was possible on the fetus without inevitably precipitating abortion was that of in utero ligation of the mesenteric vessels in rabbits by Barnard and Louw approximately 50 years ago. The first published work reporting on the development of animal models of fetal surgery began to appear in the mid-1960s, with the first reports in humans appearing in the following decade. Although fetoscopy and intrauterine invasive procedures (e.g. amniocentesis, cord blood sampling) had been practised by obstetricians for some time, systematic reports on specific animal models and of early human attempts at fetal surgical procedures heralded the marked explosion of the field observed during the past 20 years, with a few centres performing fetal surgery first in the USA but then spreading to more units on both sides of the Atlantic.
