| Australian surgeons successfully separate conjoined twins |
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17/11/2009 14:03 (84 Day 02:36 minutes ago) | |||||
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The FINANCIAL -- Australian doctors have successfully separated a pair of conjoined twins, after more than 27 hours of surgery. The twins were joined at the top of their heads and shared blood vessels and brain tissue.
It is too early to know whether the two-year-old girls, Trishna and Krishna, suffered any brain damage during the marathon operation — an outcome doctors said had a 50-50 chance, AP reported.
The medical team began the work Monday morning on separating the girls, who were brought to Australia as infants by an aid organization, according to the same source. "The teams managed to separate their brains and they are both very well," Royal Children's Hospital chief Leo Donnan told reporters. "Now we have the long task of the reconstructive surgery, which will go on for many hours."
The operation stretched past its scheduled 16 hours as surgeons battled to avoid nerve damage in the pinpoint process of separating the brains, Times wrote. The medical team took regular food and rest breaks and listened to pop music in the operating theatre to stay alert during the delicate procedure.
Plastic surgeons will now reconstruct the girls' skulls using a combination of their skin, bone grafts and artificial materials. The girls are expected to remain in an induced coma for several days, according to the same source.
Plastic surgeons used a combination of the girls' skin, bone grafts and artificial materials to finish reconstructing their skulls around five hours after the separation surgery ended, Guardian wrote.
The Children First Foundation said the girls' parents had put them in an orphanage as they were unable to care for them, according to the same source. The charity brought the children to Australia after doctors in Bangladesh, who were unable to conduct the separation surgery, requested help.
"We are delighted and relieved that the girls have now been successfully separated," the foundation said in a statement, the same source informs.
Conjoined twins occur once in every 200,000 live births and about 35 percent survive only one day, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center, Bloomberg reported. They are formed when a developing embryo starts to split into identical twins during the first few weeks after conception and stops before the process is complete, according to the center’s fact sheet.
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