Separated RI twins 'doing very well' after operation

Separated RI twins 'doing very well' after operation

Agence France-Presse, Singapore

The 15-month-old Indonesian twin girls born conjoined at the hip
and abdomen were "doing very well" after they were surgically
separated, doctors said on Sunday.

"Both woke up this morning and were smiling at their parents
and the doctors," Singaporean consultant surgeon Tan Kai Chah
said.

The twins, who shared three legs and one anus and had their
intestines fused, were successfully separated in a 10-hour
operation by a team of 15 doctors at the Gleneagles Hospital on
Saturday.

Tan said Anggi, one of the twins, had been taken off the
ventilator on Sunday and was breathing on her own.

Her sister Anjeli, who is the weaker and smaller of the pair
and has a hole in her heart, will remain on the ventilator for
another day, Tan said.

Each of the twins now have one leg, with the muscle and skin
from the middle leg they had shared grafted to cover the abdomen.

They are expected to remain in the hospital for two to three
weeks, doctors said.

British consultant surgeon Edward Kiely, one of the doctors
involved in the surgery, said following the operation that there
was a "less than five percent chance that complications will
occur".

"By this time next week if they are in good shape, I can say
that they are out of trouble," said Kiely, who had participated
in 19 successful separations of conjoined twins.

Doctors said the fact that the twins had separate vaginas,
urethras, uteruses, ovaries, bladders and kidneys enabled
surgeons to proceed with the operation smoothly.

The presence of separate vaginas and bladders had surprised
the doctors as pre-operation scans showed they were sharing these
organs. The only organ they shared was the rectum.

The girls, born into poverty in the Indonesian city of Medan,
were brought to Singapore in February and have undergone an
intensive evaluation of their condition before the decision was
made to separate them.

"I'm so relieved. I'm so happy. It's a miracle," the twins'
mother, Meng Harmaini, was quoted as saying in the Sunday Times.

Hospital officials said the discounted cost of the operation
was S$450,000 (US$273,000), which was shouldered by an Indonesian
sponsor.

Without the discount, it would have cost S$700,000.

It was the third successful separation of conjoined twins in
the wealthy city-state, which has emerged as a center for
advanced medical operations in recent years.

Singapore doctors in 2001 successfully separated one-year-old
Nepalese twins joined at the head and repeated their success in
2003 for South Korean infant twins fused at the spine.

However, an unprecedented operation on a pair of 29-year-old
twins from Iran, which attracted global attention, ended
tragically when both women -- Ladan and Laleh Bijani -- died from
severe blood loss following a 52-hour operation in July 2003.