(SACRAMENTO)

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, Darlene Hildebrandt and her husband welcomed their first child. They may never have met their healthy baby boy, and Hildebrandt herself may have faced life-threatening risks, had they not been referred to UC Davis Health earlier this year. She found the right high-risk obstetrics and neurosurgical care team to understand her very unique medical situation.

‘I gave up hope’

In 2015, Hildebrandt, who was 24 years old, learned she had a rare variant of spina bifida, a congenital medical condition.

She was born with an incompletely formed sacrum (the base of the spinal column) with abnormal openings in the bone. The covering of her spinal cord, or the meninges, pushed through one of these openings, allowing spinal fluid to collect into a growing cyst in her pelvis.

This type of cyst is called an anterior sacral meningocele (ASM). It affects only one in 100,000 people worldwide, mostly women.

At that time, Hildebrandt ’s ASM was a modest size. Doctors recommended leaving it alone.

Seven years later, Hildebrandt and her husband started planning for a baby. At her gynecologist’s office in Chico, Darlene learned the cyst had grown quite large. In addition, imaging showed her uterus appeared unusually shaped. She was referred to a group of top adult spine neurosurgeons in California.

“After two years of evaluation, they had nothing to offer me,” Hildebrandt said. “I gave up hope for treatment.”

Hildebrandt ’s impression from the outside spine specialists was that getting pregnant would pose no unusual risk, because she was told the ASM would be pushed safely back into her spinal canal as the developing baby grew. “They made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal,” she recalled.

Pregnant and in danger

In spring 2025, Hildebrandt was delighted to discover she was pregnant. Yet, she worried how her unresolved health condition would affect her developing baby, and whether pregnancy would be risky for her. 

Her local gynecologist referred Hildebrandt to the Maternal Fetal Medicine clinic at UC Davis Health, where she met Leanna Sudhof, a physician specializing in high-risk pregnancies in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Hildebrandt was a little over 14 weeks pregnant.

The doctor quickly discovered this was an extraordinarily rare and complex pregnancy.

“When I first saw her in clinic, I was amazed by what our bedside ultrasound revealed. I had never encountered anything like it,” said Sudhof, an experienced maternal-fetal medicine specialist. “The ASM was huge, filling Darlene’s entire pelvis, and the uterus was displaced up high under her ribs. The vagina and cervix were very elongated, crossing over the massive cyst to connect to her uterus.”

Hildebrandt and Sudhof found themselves in a serious situation: “I was seeing case reports of these rupturing spontaneously as the uterus grows, which introduces the risk of meningitis and other more serious outcomes, including death,” Sudhof said.

Husband and wife team to the rescue

Lucky for Hildebrandt and her developing baby, Sudhof knew just the colleague to help with this rare case. And she happens to be married to him.

Sudhof admitted Hildebrandt to UC Davis Medical Center for an urgent MRI and consultation with pediatric neurosurgeon Cameron Sadegh.

“These days, most forms of spina bifida are...(More)

For more info please read, Neurosurgery, maternal-fetal medicine team save pregnant woman of risky spinal fluid cyst, by UCDavisHealth