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Operation to Separate Conjoined Adult Twins Progressing Smoothly
Aired July 07, 2003 - 13:42 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Cautiously optimistic: that's how doctors in Singapore feel right now about the ongoing surgery to separate the Bijani sisters. The 29-year-old Iranian twins are joined in the head are in the midst of a delicate and difficult operation that promises to give them separate bodies and lives.
CNN's medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is following the story, joins us with more. Wow, one word.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It really is a wow on so many different levels. This is medical first. Medical history is made here.
Adult twins, conjoined twins have never been separated. The Bijani twins, Laleh and Ladan, have been asleep now almost 60 hours. So you just get a sense already of what an involved process this is. Sort of following them along since the beginning now for quite some time. Obviously in their departing for the O.R. earlier, they left with a kiss from friends and then quickly found themselves -- well here they are at press conference, actually, earlier before all this start making some of the first revelations they were going go ahead and go through with this.
Now, the process has been quite a long process, Kyra. And I want -- I have an animation that basically shows some of what's been going on with them now over the last 60 hours. If we can take a look at animation, you'll get a sense of exactly how this twins are conjoined and exactly how they're going to separated.
There they are. This an actual model of the two twins, Ladan and Laleh. This is their heads and their brains and their skulls. You can see as it turns around you'll see that they actually go ahead and peel away the skin. And surgeons do that, not quite like that. But they obviously get access to the skull.
Then you can obviously see where they're conjoined or connected. And that bone actually has to be removed in order to do this operation. The brain there, underneath now, you get a sense of the blue vessels. those are blood vessels that lie on top.
And the probably represent the most challenging part of the operation. If you take away one of the brains you'll see that the other brain is pretty normal there. So these brains are actually touching, but they're not intertwined and they're not really not conjoined, per se. They're touching and right now the surgeons are actually at that part of the operation, Kyra. They're actually, physically separating these two brains.
PHILLIPS: All right. And when you talk about separating the brains, obviously, what's the give and take here? We talk about each side of the brain, one is for creativity, the other -- does somebody suffer in the long run?
GUPTA: That's a very good question, and it's one of those things that from neurosurgical perspective -- that's sort of inside baseball in a way but a really important point.
I'll give you an example. One of the twins wants to be a journalist and it just so happens that the right side of her brain is conjoined with the left side of her brain of her twin that wants to be a lawyer. It's exactly as you said, Kyra. This is not the way you'd pick it because the right side brain person wants that to be a journalist, that's also responsible for creativity. The one who wants to be a lawyer has the left side of the brain conjoined and that's also responsible for language.
So there is give and take here. What the doctors are doing, I'm sure, right now is finding the natural separation between these two brains and sort of working that separation until they can get the two women separated.
PHILLIPS: Now we've covered a couple of these surgeries in the past, but they've always been babies or little children. Is it easier, more difficult, children versus adults, a surgery like this?
GUPTA: I think on every level it's probably more difficult to do the adult versus the children, which is probably why this is the first time it's actually been done on an adult.
Couple of things to keep in mind. First of all, just even starting at a simple level, the bone is much thicker with adults than it is children. And they already had a little bit of a problem. That part of the operation took a lot longer than they thought it was going to take.
But even more fundamental than that, kids are very resilient, Kyra. They tend to bounce back from these things. Their brains are still sort of hard wiring themselves at the age that a lot of these operations have been done.
With adults all that hard wiring is done, whatever sort of damage to the brain occurs from an operation like this, they're going to have some of those setbacks and some of those setbacks are going to be there for a while. With kids a lot of time they'll sort of bounce back from something like that. Not so, at least not so much with the adults.
PHILLIPS: So loss of life. What's the chances?
GUPTA: We asked the surgeons, we talked to Dr. Kerson (ph) directly, we talked to some of the surgeons over there in Singapore. They're saying 50/50. Not the best odds, especially when you think that this is still consider this is an elective operation. These two women would have likely lived a normal life span without the operation, so this is elective. And those are some tough odds for an elective case.
PHILLIPS: Interesting word, normal. Being conjoined at head is far from...
GUPTA: Well life span, they would have lived length wise.
PHILLIPS: All right, Sanjay Gupta, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Smoothly>
Aired July 7, 2003 - 13:42 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Cautiously optimistic: that's how doctors in Singapore feel right now about the ongoing surgery to separate the Bijani sisters. The 29-year-old Iranian twins are joined in the head are in the midst of a delicate and difficult operation that promises to give them separate bodies and lives.
CNN's medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is following the story, joins us with more. Wow, one word.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It really is a wow on so many different levels. This is medical first. Medical history is made here.
Adult twins, conjoined twins have never been separated. The Bijani twins, Laleh and Ladan, have been asleep now almost 60 hours. So you just get a sense already of what an involved process this is. Sort of following them along since the beginning now for quite some time. Obviously in their departing for the O.R. earlier, they left with a kiss from friends and then quickly found themselves -- well here they are at press conference, actually, earlier before all this start making some of the first revelations they were going go ahead and go through with this.
Now, the process has been quite a long process, Kyra. And I want -- I have an animation that basically shows some of what's been going on with them now over the last 60 hours. If we can take a look at animation, you'll get a sense of exactly how this twins are conjoined and exactly how they're going to separated.
There they are. This an actual model of the two twins, Ladan and Laleh. This is their heads and their brains and their skulls. You can see as it turns around you'll see that they actually go ahead and peel away the skin. And surgeons do that, not quite like that. But they obviously get access to the skull.
Then you can obviously see where they're conjoined or connected. And that bone actually has to be removed in order to do this operation. The brain there, underneath now, you get a sense of the blue vessels. those are blood vessels that lie on top.
And the probably represent the most challenging part of the operation. If you take away one of the brains you'll see that the other brain is pretty normal there. So these brains are actually touching, but they're not intertwined and they're not really not conjoined, per se. They're touching and right now the surgeons are actually at that part of the operation, Kyra. They're actually, physically separating these two brains.
PHILLIPS: All right. And when you talk about separating the brains, obviously, what's the give and take here? We talk about each side of the brain, one is for creativity, the other -- does somebody suffer in the long run?
GUPTA: That's a very good question, and it's one of those things that from neurosurgical perspective -- that's sort of inside baseball in a way but a really important point.
I'll give you an example. One of the twins wants to be a journalist and it just so happens that the right side of her brain is conjoined with the left side of her brain of her twin that wants to be a lawyer. It's exactly as you said, Kyra. This is not the way you'd pick it because the right side brain person wants that to be a journalist, that's also responsible for creativity. The one who wants to be a lawyer has the left side of the brain conjoined and that's also responsible for language.
So there is give and take here. What the doctors are doing, I'm sure, right now is finding the natural separation between these two brains and sort of working that separation until they can get the two women separated.
PHILLIPS: Now we've covered a couple of these surgeries in the past, but they've always been babies or little children. Is it easier, more difficult, children versus adults, a surgery like this?
GUPTA: I think on every level it's probably more difficult to do the adult versus the children, which is probably why this is the first time it's actually been done on an adult.
Couple of things to keep in mind. First of all, just even starting at a simple level, the bone is much thicker with adults than it is children. And they already had a little bit of a problem. That part of the operation took a lot longer than they thought it was going to take.
But even more fundamental than that, kids are very resilient, Kyra. They tend to bounce back from these things. Their brains are still sort of hard wiring themselves at the age that a lot of these operations have been done.
With adults all that hard wiring is done, whatever sort of damage to the brain occurs from an operation like this, they're going to have some of those setbacks and some of those setbacks are going to be there for a while. With kids a lot of time they'll sort of bounce back from something like that. Not so, at least not so much with the adults.
PHILLIPS: So loss of life. What's the chances?
GUPTA: We asked the surgeons, we talked to Dr. Kerson (ph) directly, we talked to some of the surgeons over there in Singapore. They're saying 50/50. Not the best odds, especially when you think that this is still consider this is an elective operation. These two women would have likely lived a normal life span without the operation, so this is elective. And those are some tough odds for an elective case.
PHILLIPS: Interesting word, normal. Being conjoined at head is far from...
GUPTA: Well life span, they would have lived length wise.
PHILLIPS: All right, Sanjay Gupta, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Smoothly>
