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.