Surgeons began a marathon operation yesterday to separate a pair of 29-year-old Iranian twin sisters joined at the head -- a procedure that could kill one or both.
After a lifetime of compromises on everything from when to wake up each day to what career to pursue, Ladan and Laleh Bijani said they preferred to face the dangers of the surgery rather than continue living joined.
"If God wants us to live the rest of our lives as two separate, independent individuals, we will," Ladan said Saturday.
PHOTO: AP
An international team of 28 doctors and about 100 medical assistants will participate in the surgery, which will last at least 48 hours and could take four days.
"The twins were wheeled into the operating theater and the medical team is now administering anesthesia to the twins," said Dr. Prem Kumar, a spokesman at Singapore's Raffles Hospital.
The twins had said they wanted to walk into the operating room as a sign of courage, but they were brought in by wheelchair shortly after 10:00am because they were too tired to stand, Kumar said.
The operation will mark the first time surgeons have tried to separate adult craniopagus twins -- siblings born joined at the head -- since the procedure was first successfully performed in 1952.
"It's going to be a good day," the lead neurosurgeon Dr. Keith Goh told reporters as he arrived at the hospital yesterday morning. He said he and his wife spent the morning praying for the twins.
When asked about his mood as he entered the hospital yesterday, Dr. Benjamin Carson, one of six international experts assisting in the surgery, said one word: "Sunshine."
Ladan said Saturday that she and her sister would spend the hours before the operation reading the Koran and performing ritual Muslim ablutions. "We feel closer to God that way," she said.
The sisters each have a 50-50 chance of survival, said Carson, a Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon from Baltimore, Maryland. But he said he expected the surgery to be a success.
The US$288,000 cost of the surgery is being underwritten by Raffles Hospital, and the doctors' fees are being waived.
The Bijani sisters, born in Firouzabad, southern Iran, in 1974, have separate brains that lie next to each other in a joined skull. Their heads are connected but their bodies are otherwise distinct.
The surgeons' biggest challenge will be dealing with a shared vein that drains blood from the women's brains. German doctors concluded in 1996 that the vein made surgery too dangerous.
The surgeons' first task was to remove a vein from one sister's leg that will be used as a graft to replace the shared vein, Kumar said. He did not say who the vein would be taken from.
Carson compared the veins to a city's road network, and said the surgeons had to identify traffic jams and create detours. The largest vein was the size of a finger, he said.
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
An earthquake registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.7 off northern Japan on Monday prompted a short-lived tsunami alert and the advisory of a higher risk of a possible mega-quake for coastal areas there. The Cabinet Office and the Japan Meteorological Agency said there was a 1% chance for a mega-quake, compared to a 0.1% chance during normal times, in the next week or so following the powerful quake near the Chishima and Japan trenches. Officials said the advisory was not a quake prediction but urged residents in 182 towns along the northeastern coasts to raise their preparedness while continuing their daily lives. Prime
HAZARDOUS CONDITION: The typhoon’s sheer size, with winds extending 443km from its center, slowed down the ability of responders to help communities, an official said The US Coast Guard was searching for six people after losing contact with their disabled boat off the coast of Guam following Typhoon Sinlaku. The crew of the 44m dry cargo vessel, the US-registered Mariana, on Wednesday notified the coast guard that the boat had lost its starboard engine and needed assistance, Petty Officer 3rd Class Avery Tibbets said yesterday. The coast guard set up a one-hour communication schedule with the vessel, but lost contact on Thursday. A Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules aircraft was launched to search for the six people on board, but it had to return to Guam because of
RSS