Return to Transcripts main page
Live From...
Girl Separated From Twin Back in Operating Room
Aired August 06, 2002 - 14:01 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: A 1-year-old girl separated just hours ago from her twin sister is back in the operating room. You probably know the story. The girls were born joined at the head. And about this time yesterday, doctors and nurses began to surgically separate them.
CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman is keeping up with them at the UCLA Medical Center.
Gary, what do you have for us?
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, it's been a whirlwind of emotions here at the UCLA Medical Center today. We're just the onlookers. Imagine if you were the parents. Their two 1- year-old girls in surgery for 22 1/2 hours. They were conjoined at the head. They were successfully separated. But then, about one hour forty-five minutes ago, one of their little girls was rushed back to operating room. The complication is not considered out of the ordinary. But after the initial exhilarating news, just after dawn this morning, the news was disappointing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. MICHAEL KARPF, DIRECTOR, UCLA MEDICAL CENTER: At 9:17, Maria Teresa was taken back to the operating room to deal with the subdural hematoma. Subdural hematoma is a collection of blood underneath the scalp, and it needs to be dealt with to make sure that the pressure doesn't build up in the scalp.
This was not necessarily an unexpected complication. Dr. Jorge Lazareff (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that he thinks that this will be manageable and that he still feels that surgery can be quite successful from Maria Teresa.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TUCHMAN: Even after the good news came that the separation was successful, doctors stressed to us please keep in mind that the hours and days and weeks ahead are very crucial. There could be complications. Don't be surprised if there are. And we do have a complication.
As we speak, the surgery is still going on in the operating room. We have been told we will be informed when it's over. But as of now, we're talking about an hour and 15 minutes that Maria Teresa has been in the operating room. Her other sister, Maria de Jesus, who she has been attached to for the first 377 days of their lives, is in critical but stable condition right now in the recovery room.
The little girls from Guatemala. They and their parents have been at this hospital now for over two months preparing for the surgery. They grew up in a part of Guatemala, very rural southwestern Guatemala. After they were born, they were brought to a neonatal unit 6 hours away from their home. Their parents took six hour bus rides regularly to visit their children. They could not afford to stay in any of the lodging near the hotel.
It's been a very difficult life for this family. But this hospital has treated the little girls like queens, treated the father like a king, everything free for this family. And right now, the parents are inside the hospital with their precious little girls.
Kyra, back to you.
PHILLIPS: Gary, thanks so much. We'll look forward to an update.
Here with us again our medical correspondent and brain surgeon, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Sanjay, let's talk a little bit about this blood forming under the skull. Obviously, it was not unexpected, so I guess that's a good thing.
SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Certainly, after any operation of this size, Kyra, having a blood collection on top of the brain here -- and in fact, I should point out the blood is actually on top of the brain from the description, not just underneath the scalp -- that can exert some pressure on top of the brain, which is of great concern usually. But not unexpected to have this sort of bleeding after an operation of this length, where doctors were actually manipulating a lot of the blood vessels. Not something anybody would want, but certainly not unexpected -- and usually, I should point out as well, something that can be pretty easily taken care of. As Gary Tuchman just pointed out, she's in the operating room right now. Hopefully, that will turn out just fine.
PHILLIPS: So Sanjay, remember the Egyptian twins? It was a story we followed for a really long time. Could this surgery, the outcome of this surgery, possibly affect the future of those two?
GUPTA: I think that's an excellent question. And one thing I'll point out is that while there have only been five of these cases done over the last 10 years, we have heard about a couple of these cases recently. The Egyptian twins in Texas, I believe, being the other case. The techniques for doing these sorts of operations in terms of the surgical technique, the microscopes, and, most importantly, the modeling -- the way they actually look at the brains and are able to model not only the brains but all the blood vessels between them -- make these operations a lot easier to perform. They're still very difficult. obviously. But such is the case we see here in L.A., and possibly the case of the Egyptian twins as well.
They may look at this and say, Wow, they got through that, and maybe that will give them some more likelihood of getting that one done in Texas as well.
PHILLIPS: There's a bit of an update on where we stand right now, possibly a future surgery.
Let's have a little surgery ourselves here and take your model of the brain there and just sort of review with folks about the crisscrossing of these veins, OK, and how the surgery was performed. And a good thing was they didn't have to go into the brain tissue, obviously.
GUPTA: That's right. So you've certainly seen a lot of pictures now of these two brains. And I'm just pointing out here precisely if you look at one of the major veins of the brain -- actually sits right on top -- which would have been between the two brains -- between the brain number one and brain number two -- and in the first case, the vein actually drains from Maria number one, I am calling here, Maria Teresa, actually, into the back of the brain of Maria number two. And if you see here this vein coming out, takes from the other brain and drains into the back of this vein.
They call it crisscrossing. They call it the innertangled. Whatever you want to call it, that was the most difficult part of the operation. That's what the surgeon said. That's what they expected. That's what they found. But everything points to the fact that they were able to take care of that in the operating room.
You can see the MRI photograph there now. If you concentrate on that black line sort of in the middle of the photograph going from top right to bottom left, you'll see sort of the membrane that separated the two brains, and that's exactly where the veins run that we've been talking so much about.
PHILLIPS: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, we look forward to the next piece of news. We'll be talking then.
GUPTA: We'll keep you posted.
PHILLIPS: All right, thanks, Sanjay.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
