RIYADH, 3 January 2006 — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has issued directives for the surgery for conjoined twins, who arrived here yesterday morning from Morocco.
The king will bear all expenses of the separation surgery of the twins, Hafsa and Ilham, said Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeea, head of the National Guard Health Affairs who will lead the multidisciplinary medical team entrusted with the task of performing the separation.
“The Moroccan conjoined twins will undergo surgery at King Abdul Aziz Medical City four to six weeks from today,” said Rabeea. “Preliminary medical investigations are being carried out by the doctors attending to the twins since their arrival.”
The 50-day-old twins have a conjoined abdomen and share a common urinary tract and hip, which will demand some restructuring after the operation. The twins are currently in stable condition, but doctors say they need to gain some weight before surgery.
“The twins are now underweight. They can only be operated after their combined weight totals eight kilograms,” said Rabeea. “Moreover, the decision to separate the babies cannot be taken before all analyses are completed to avoid any possible complication.”
Doctors have decided that separation is the best choice for the girls’ future. If left conjoined, they would be forced to lie prone.
Rabeea’s team has performed 10 procedures for the separation of conjoined twins since 1990. Three sets of twins were from the Kingdom, two each from Sudan and Egypt and one each from Malaysia, the Philippines and Poland.
The latest operation was conducted on June 26, 2005, to separate Egyptian twins Alaa and Walaa. All the operations were successful.
Saudi Arabia, where separation surgeries of conjoined twins have had a 100-percent success rate, is now known to have best medical facilities in the world.
Conjoined twins occur roughly once in every 50,000 births worldwide and few are born alive or live long. For twins who undergo surgery, one or both often die after the operation and the rate of survival beyond the age of two is just 20 percent.
