A TOP Bahrain medical team successfully separated two conjoined twins in a complex operation that lasted eight hours, in Tanzania.
The nine-month-old female twins who shared a liver and rib cage have been placed under observation at the Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam.
The surgery team from the King Hamad University Hospital (KHUH) was headed by paediatric surgeon consultant Dr Martin Corbally and involved five specialists in the fields of anaesthesia, paediatric surgery and plastic surgery.
“The surgery was conducted as part of an agreement between KHUH and the Irish ‘Operation Childlife’, a charity society which extends a lifeline to distressed children in Tanzania and Vietnam since 2012,” said KHUH Commander Major-General Dr Shaikh Salman bin Atiyatullah Al Khalifa.
Conjoined twins, or Siamese twins, are twins born with their bodies physically connected. While the causes are not quite clear, the twins being connected occurs once in every 50,000 to 60,000 births, with more than 60 per cent of those cases being stillborns or dying shortly after delivery.
“We developed a well-studied plan for the operation which was implemented in four stages,” added the KHUH statement.
The first phase was the anaesthesia stage under the supervision of KHUH anaesthesia, ICU, and pain management consultant Dr Dhafir Al Khudairi.
The second stage was planning the surgery, followed by the procedure itself where Dr Corbally and his team handled the separation of the liver and rib cage of the twins.
The fourth and final stage was led by KHUH plastic reconstructive consultant Dr Abdulla Fakhro.
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