A team of 18 doctors began a complicated separation surgery Saturday in an attempt to give 2-year-old conjoined twins from Egypt a chance at independent lives.
The risks are high: One or both of the boys may die, and even if they survive, some brain damage is possible.
"Ahmed and Mohamed Ibrahim have begun the first stage of their surgery that will physically separate them and -- we all hope -- will give them the opportunity to grow and develop like other brothers," said Dr. Jim Thomas, chief of critical-care medicine at Children's Medical Center Dallas.
PHOTO: REUTERS
By mid-afternoon, doctors entered a critical stage as neurosurgeons prepared to separate an intricate web of shared blood vessels, Thomas said.
Thomas relayed a message from Dr. Dale Swift, one of five pediatric neurosurgeons: "Everything is going fine. There have been no problems."
Saturday night, the hospital said the twins were in stable condition and the surgery was continuing.
Doctors spent more than a year planning the surgery to separate the boys joined at the crown of the head. The operation was expected to take a team of 50 to 60 medical personnel anywhere from 18 to 90 hours to finish.
Relatives of the boys in the tiny village of el-Homr, near the southern Egyptian city of Qus, prayed for their safe return.
"It is all in God's hands now," an uncle of the twins, Nasser Mohammed Ibrahim, said in a telephone interview. "He is the one who can save their lives."
Thomas said much of Saturday morning was spent positioning the boys in a specially made bed that lets doctors swivel their bodies for easy access to the front and back of their heads.
Craniofacial surgeons planned to open the boys' scalp and remove skin expanders inserted about five months ago. The extra skin and tissue created by the expanders will cover the head wounds.
While each boy has his own brain, they share an extensive attachment of blood vessels.
On the right side of each boy's brain, the blood flows in a normal fashion -- into the brain and back to the boy. On the left side, though, the blood flows from one boy into the other.
"During the operation, the left hemisphere is going to be at risk," Swift said earlier this week.
He said the hope is that the blood will drain into other deep veins. The worst possible situation, Swift said, is that the blood can't get out and the hemisphere becomes swollen and damaged.
"We think the result will be somewhere in the middle," he said.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS