RIYADH: A team of 70 medical personnel led by the newly appointed Minister of Health Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah successfully separated Egyptian conjoined twins Hassan and Mahmoud yesterday at Riyadh’s King Abdulaziz Medical City.
The nine-month-old twins, who were joined at the abdomen, were separated after nine hours of surgery, said Saud Al-Jadaan, one of the team’s doctors. “The operation went smoothly. The babies are stable,” he said.
The two were in separate rooms in the hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit as doctors worked to reconstruct the body parts the twins had shared; these included a bowel, a urinary tract and sexual organs. This was being done to give the boys as much natural organ function as possible, Jadaan said. “What we do now will affect their quality of life in the future,” he added.
The operation, which could be seen live on the hospital’s website, was originally expected to take 15 hours but went more quickly than planned, hospital spokesman Sami Al-Shalan said.
“We are three hours ahead of time,” he said, attributing that to the operating team’s experience.
Following a request from their parents, the twins were brought to the Kingdom on the directive of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah on Feb. 10. After a series of clinical tests, surgical team assessed a 70 percent chance of successfully separating the twins. The team conducted a mock rehearsal of the surgery on Thursday.
As scheduled at 7.30 a.m. yesterday morning, Al-Rabeeah escorted the twins into the operating room. Prior to entering the theater, the parents were allowed to see their babies.
The twins were separated in the seventh phase of the operation at 4.20 p.m. and were laid on two different beds 15 minutes later.
During the bowel separation, the surgeons identified the sharing part of the bowel as well as the supplying vessels. Each twin had three meters of bowel, which is considered a good length. Both urinary bladders were separated from the frontal side. A fistula between the urethra and the large bowel of the twin was divided.
The doctors said the sharing part of the urethra was more than what they expected. The wounds were closed at 6.20 p.m. and the twins were moved to the pediatric intensive care unit at 8.15 p.m. If there are no complications, the twins will stay in the hospital for another two months to recover before returning to Egypt with their parents, Al-Jadaan said.
It was the 21st successful operation to separate conjoined twins in the Kingdom.
— With input from agencies
