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CNN Live Today

Twin Girls Now in Separate Beds

Aired August 06, 2002 - 12:13   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Lots of smiles today at the UCLA Medical Center, where two baby girls, born joined at the head, are now in separate beds. Doctors are calling the surgery very successful, although the twins are not out of the woods yet.
CNN National Correspondent Gary Tuchman -- he is at the hospital, immersed in all the excitement -- hi, Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kyra. You know, conjoined twins are only born one in 200,000 live births. Connected at the head is one in 10,000,000. It is very rare, and that is why there are no reliable statistics about success rates, but what happened today has so far been very successful. Two 1-year-old girls, their first birthday was on July 25, wheeled into the operating room yesterday morning, wheeled out this morning, 22 and a half hours. And Maria Theresa and Maria de Jesus are now separated for the first time in their lives, and so far so good, according to doctors. As a matter of fact, here at the Mattel Children's Hospital at the UCLA Medical Center, they say they believe it went even better than they expected it would.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MICHAEL KARPF, DIRECTOR, UCLA MEDICAL CENTER: I think it went even better than I hoped for. We had serious concerns about what they would find when they actually saw the venous system, the veins, they had to separate. Apparently, it was as they thought it was going to be, the separations went very smoothly, though I couldn't have asked for better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TUCHMAN: The two little girls are from Guatemala, southwestern Guatemala. They live with their parents in a very rural part of the country. They have been here for a little over two months getting prepped for this surgery. Their parents, Leticia and Wenceslao Quiej Alvarez. The wife is 22-years-old, the husband is 20-years-old, have an amazing story to tell. Their children were in a neonatal unit in Guatemala.

They had a six hour bus ride to go visit their children, there was nowhere to stay there, so they had to go home each week, and then they would come back the following week to visit their children. That is what they have been dealing with.

What have the children had to do since they have been connected at the heads? Well, for example, to roll over was quite an ordeal for them. One of the children, Maria Theresa is the stronger one. She weighs a little bit more. Together, they were 4.4 pounds when they were born. So when they both try to roll over in different directions, it is usually the heavier one, Maria Theresa, who has won the race to roll over.

As far as using their appendages, they haven't been able to really use their hands. Because of the way they are connected, their shoulder movements are inhibited. They have often used their feet to try to pick up things. They are very intelligent. They are able to say some words now, like "mama," and "dada" and "agua," that is the Spanish word for water. And since they have been here in the United States, they have learned at this hospital "bye-bye," and they say "bye-bye."

But little things, like giving them a bath here at the hospital, they literally have to hold one of the children upside down while the other one goes in the bathtub. To feed them, they have to hold one of the children on their side while the other little girl eats.

So it has been very difficult for them. Doctors believe the children could have lived for a while, but it would have been a very poor quality of life. As of now, they are separated, they are still sleeping after the anesthesiology. They expected -- will wake up soon. We are anticipating a news conference about 45 minutes from now to get new information. The hours, the days, and the weeks still to come are very crucial, but so far, the news is very good -- Kyra, back to you.

PHILLIPS: Gary, we can't wait for that news conference. Now I have to ask you, what was the mood of the doctors when the girls were first separated? I mean, did they clap, did they scream, were they praying?

TUCHMAN: We talked to a medical student who was in the operating room for about 14 of the 22 and a half hours, and he said exactly the things you said. He said there were tears. There were people laughing, there were people giving high fives. There was a feeling of exhilaration in the operating room. Since then, we have talked to the director here of the UCLA Medical Center, and he wants to be very careful. He doesn't want to sound too exhilarated because there are still some crucial moments in hours and days to come. However, it is clear that all the people here are very elated with what they have done so far.

PHILLIPS: I bet. Gary Tuchman. Thanks, Gary.

Here to talk more about the twins' prognosis, CNN Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, as you know, Gary said the next few days, hours, probably minutes are extremely critical. Let's talk about why.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, it is very early to tell just how they are going to do. Everything looks favorable at this point, but the twins are still under anesthesia from the operation, still waking up from that, I should say, and it will be some time before you can know exactly how those blood vessels that we have talked so much about over the last couple of days, how they actually tolerated this operation.

The big thing that the doctors are concerned about are any subtle signs of stroke, which would be any signs of weakness, difficulty speaking, things like that. It doesn't look like -- sound like from hearing what the doctors had to say, that any of that has happened, but really, time will tell. In terms -- let me just demonstrate what exactly it is that we are talking about here.

If you look at this picture, let me just orient you first, Kyra. First picture. Here is an eyeball, so you get a sense of where -- which way the brain is looking here, which was the head is looking. And over here, up top, you see a separate membrane, almost, that separates those two brains, and these dark areas actually represent the veins on either side of the head.

And let me show you now with a model why that was so critical. That yellow area being where that big vein runs, the one we have been hearing so much about. You will see the model here, the vein actually running from one of the baby's head, and instead of going down here, where it should normally go, it actually continued on and continued to drain in the back of the other Maria's head. And the same thing was happening with the other baby's head, the big vein from her brain draining into the back of her twin sister's head, and that was a problem for the surgeons. Certainly, they knew about that going in. That is what they thought about, clipping those veins for a short period of time, could possible cause blood clots, possibly cause stroke, and that was their concern. But again, Kyra, sounds like from everything we are hearing, they were able to tackled that problem, it went well, they were able to tackle all the reconstruction, certainly putting the bone back, putting the skin back, all of that is a large part of the operation as well. It sounds like everything is going just well. It will be a few hours, probably a few days maybe even still before we know how well it went.

PHILLIPS: Now, Sanjay, you are a brain surgeon. Is this something that you really would have been interested in doing? Is this something that you would like to maybe do in the future?

GUPTA: Well, to be honest with you, I think that this -- only five of these have been done over the last decade. So this is not a very common operation. This is an operation done by pediatric neurosurgeons, neurosurgeons for kids. I do adult procedures myself. But no doubt that this particular operation certainly employs a lot of some of the most amazing skills in neurosurgery, certainly working around those blood vessels, working at the top of the brain like that, working with these small children, and certainly trying to reconnect things and make it all look good at the end as well, including the top of the head and the skin and all that sort of thing. It is all just an amazing sort of array, a sort of orchestration of events. I would love to have seen it. I don't know if -- like I said, it might be out of my league a bit, but I would have loved to have been there for sure.

PHILLIPS: I bet. Dr. Sanjay Gupta. All right. We will talk to you again in the next hour for sure.

GUPTA: Thanks.

PHILLIPS: Or as things develop, Sanjay. Thank you.

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