Conjoined twins separated

KOLKATA: It is celebration time at Sishu Nibas Surgical Ward of the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital. At the centre of attention is a pair of five-and-a-half month old twins, Mona and Lisa.
The girls were conjoined but have been successfully operated on and are now two complete human beings. A team of doctors, led by paediatric surgeon Dr Ashok Ray, conducted the operation.Quoting international literature on paediatric surgery, Ray said this was the “world’s 27th successful separation of thoraco-omphalopagus twins� — a medical term for those joined at the chest, sharing a few ribs and some internal organs.
The five-and-a-half hour operation was the first of its kind in Kolkata where both babies survived, said Ray who is also head of paediatric surgery at CMC. About a year ago, twins, joined at the buttock, had been operated on at the Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital, but one of them died, Ray added.
The twins were born at a private clinic in Burdwan. Abandoned by their parents, they were brought to CMC when they were a week old and weighed only 3.5 kgs. They suffered from respiratory infection and continuous diahorreal attacks.
The nurses at SNS ward took special care of them and christened them Monalisa. Dr Ray put the twins on a ‘total parental nutrition’ regime to increase their body weigth and prepare them for the separation.
A battery of tests done at the CMC’s cost revealed that the girls shared a common liver, part of the small intestine and the diaphragm. Though there were two sets of lungs and two hearts, they shared the plural and pericardial cavities which house the lungs and heart respectively. The sternum and the lower ribs were fused.
On November 1, when the twins together wighed about 9 kgs, Ray decided to operated on them. “We could not wait longer as the separation trauma — both physiological and pathological — could have made survival difficult,� he said.
Before the “delicate� operation could be conducted, there was a legal hurdle. It required the consent of the biological parents. The mother was traced and brought to sign the papers but the parents refused to take responsibility of the girls, even though all medical support was to be provided by the CMC.
On Thursday, the girls were doing well. Their vital functions were stable and they were being fed orally. “There are offers to adopt them, even from the sisters who took care of them for so long. But, we are weighing our options,� Ray said.