Contact: SSM Cardinal Glennon Public Relations office, 314-577-5615
SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center has met the needs of children and families with great compassion for more than 50 years. In the case of Joseph Maraachli, we agreed to take the baby into our care to provide a medical consultation. Baby Joseph has Leigh Syndrome, a progressive neurologic disease.
Following a thorough examination by a multi-disciplinary medical team of specialists from SSM Cardinal Glennon and Saint Louis University School of Medicine, along with extensive consultations with Joseph’s parents and the SSM Cardinal Glennon ethics committee, we concluded that a tracheotomy was medically appropriate.
Baby Joseph received a tracheotomy on Monday. He is currently in the pediatric intensive care unit, where tracheotomy patients routinely spend 7 to 10 days following the procedure. After he is discharged from SSM Cardinal Glennon, Joseph will travel to Ranken Jordan – A Pediatric Specialty Hospital in St. Louis before being transported to his family home in Windsor.
It is our hope that this procedure will allow Joseph and his family the gift of a few more months together and that Joseph may be more comfortable with a permanent tracheotomy.
As with any of the children we help, our primary focus must remain on the patient and what is best in his or her individual circumstances.
We ask that you keep Baby Joseph and his family in your prayers.
Click here for a Priests for Life press release
Click here for photos of Baby Joseph after surgery