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Twins conjoined at hips separated after surgery
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DOCTORS at the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University successfully operated on a pair of 12-week-old conjoined twin girls who were connected to each other at the hips.
The surgery, which was smooth, lasted five hours. The twins will be transferred from the intensive care unit to an ordinary ward in three days. If they recover well, they can be discharged as early as two weeks, doctors said yesterday.
The girls were connected by soft tissues of the hips, lower part of the spines and rectums, and had one anus.
“Different from other conjoined twins who are usually connected at the chest and belly, the girls in this case did not pose life-threatening risks during surgery,” said Dr Zheng Shan, vice president of the hospital.
“The challenges in this case involved the functioning of the surgical area. We carefully separated their nerves to ensure that the nerves of both the girls functioned properly. We also had to rebuild separate anuses for them.”
Zheng said a 3D printing technology was used to identify the spine, bone and hip structure.
The technology gave the doctors a clear view of the conjoined parts and it helped to ensure the accuracy of the cut and protect the nerve system.
“The technology is extremely helpful,” Dr Zheng said.
The twins were born on March 17 at a county hospital in Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province. Prenatal checks had confirmed they were twins but it was only during their birth that the deformity was detected.
They were then sent to the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University, which has handled similar cases before.
Doctors said the best time for a surgery is when the twins are 3 months old and have a combined weight of 10 kilograms. The girls weighed 9.55 kilograms at the time of surgery.
Conjoined twins are a rare congenital deformity with incidence of one in 200,000 in the world. Most of them are connected with the chest and belly. The connection of hips are rare and only covers 18 percent of all the cases.
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