Baby born to brain-dead mother after almost 4 months

LISBON, Portugal -- Doctors at a Lisbon hospital have delivered a baby almost four months after its mother was declared brain dead -- a record for such cases in Portugal.

Lisbon's Sao Jose Hospital says in a statement the healthy baby boy weighing 2.35 kilos (5.2 pounds) was delivered Tuesday by cesarean section after 32 weeks.

The 37-year-old mother was declared brain dead in February, but doctors concluded the fetus was healthy. The statement said the hospital's ethics committee, the baby's father and mother's family all agreed with the procedure.

Luis Graca, the head of the Portuguese Society of Obstetricians, said Wednesday the birth was "an extraordinary feat."

In a similar case last year, a healthy baby was born to a woman in Omaha who'd been kept alive for nearly two months after being declared brain dead.

At that time, doctors said there were just 33 similar cases reported in medical literature worldwide since 1982.