JEDDAH, 29 January 2005 — Abdul Rahman and Abdul Rahim, the two-week-old Saudi Siamese twins, died yesterday morning at the National Guard Hospital in Jeddah.
Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, chief pediatric surgeon at the National Guard’s King Abdul Aziz Medical City in Riyadh, announced that the twins who were born in Hera General Hospital in Makkah to Saudi parents could not survive due to continued health problems they had been having since their birth two weeks ago.
He said: “Recently, we noticed that the twins’ conjoined hearts were not functioning well and we expected their health condition to get worse and that’s what happened early this morning when they died.”
On behalf of his medical team, Dr. Rabeeah sent condolences to Crown Prince Abdullah and the parents of the Siamese twins.
“On instructions from the crown prince, we tried our best to explore the possibility of conducting an operation to separate the twins. Unfortunately, it was impossible to separate them because they were suffering from serious heart problems which prevented us to do the surgical separation,” he said.
The twins had one body, two stomachs but shared an abdomen, two heads, two arms, two legs, two lungs and conjoined hearts.
