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Nicklaus Children’s Hospital has several outpatient and urgent care centers throughout South Florida, including on-demand, virtual care.
Walk-in urgent care with no appointment needed.
Serving as your child's primary doctor's office.
Pediatric specialty consultations available closer to home.
A full range of comprehensive services all under one roof.
Connect with providers from the comfort of your own home.
With over 800 pediatric clinicians on staff, we’re dedicated to helping you connect with the right specialist for your needs.
We have expertise in treating children and educating families on hundreds of different conditions.
We use cutting-edge, specialized treatments and procedures to ensure the best care for your child.
Also known as: EA.
When a fetus’s esophagus, the tube that carries food to the stomach, does not develop correctly, the defect is known as esophageal atresia. This birth defect is often present with others, including a bad connection between the esophagus and windpipe (known as tracheoesophageal fistula). These defects can cause a number of problems.
Researchers aren’t sure exactly what causes esophageal atresia. There appears to be a genetic component to the birth defect.
Babies with esophageal atresia have trouble feeding and breathing. This leads to drooling, coughing, gagging, choking and a bluish color when babies try to feed and occasionally difficulty breathing.
Surgery is needed to repair esophageal atresia as soon as possible after birth. A baby will need to be fed by IV nutrition until the surgery can take place.
Reviewed by: Shifra A Koyfman, MD
This page was last updated on: March 20, 2019 04:06 PM
At their 20-week anatomy scan, Olivia Bittles and her husband Bobby learned their unborn baby had esophageal atresia, a genetic condition in which the esophagus does not connect directly to the stomach. This news came as a shock.
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The Foker operation is a modern set of procedures that can successfully treat even the trickiest forms of esophageal atresia in days to weeks instead.