Parents battle over baby RB's life support
Updated on 03 November 2009
The estranged parents of a severely disabled baby boy are fighting in the High Court over their conflicting views about the child's treatment.
The one-year-old is known only as RB. His father wants a specialist to examine him to decide whether a tracheotomy operation, which creates a hole in the patient's neck to allow them to breathe, would mean the child could come off a hospital ventilator and go home.
But Dr F, a consultant in paediatric intensive care, told Mr Justice McFarlane the little boy is "not a candidate" for tracheotomy.
The baby has been on life support since an hour after he was born on 10 October last year.
In most cases of this severity, the parents decide to ask for life support to be withdrawn and the child's mother, along with the doctors caring for RB say that is in his "best interests".
