 What is Desperate Debra?
The baby's mother – she's called Debra – remains impassive throughout these agonised fumblings. But then Debra has no feelings. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market. The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving. To understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. "Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route," says Tydeman, "that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy." In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted.
 Desperate Debra is a training device obstetricians use to simulate delivering an impacted fetus.
 Desperate Debra is a training device obstetricians use to simulate delivering babies.  Desperate Debra is a training device obstetricians use to simulate delivering an impacted fetus.  Desperate Debra is a training device used to simulate cesarean deliveries.  Desperate Debra is a training device obstetricians use to simulate delivering a baby when the mother has preeclampsia.