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American Morning

Historic Surgery to Separate Two Iranian Women

Aired June 11, 2003 - 08:44   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.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: In this morning's "Paging Dr. Gupta" segment, historic surgery to separate two Iranian women who have been joined at the head for 29 years.
Sanjay is at CNN Center in Atlanta to tell us more about the risky procedure.

Sanjay, good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

You know, there are so few firsts in surgery anymore. But this certainly is one of them. We're talking about conjoined twins, which we've been hearing so much about, because of the Guatemalan twins. But imagine fast-forwarding that process 29 years. And you actually see two women, at 29 years old, educated women, Iranian women, who have been like that for their entire lives. Everything about them, the way they comb their hair every morning, the position of their head, the positions of their spines, all of that has been that way for 29 years. They were born January of 1974. They've been going through the testing for this, trying to figure out whether or not they can be separated since November of last year.

And just to reiterate, Daryn, this has never been done before, adult twins.

When we talk about conjoined twins, we often are talking about newborns or very, very young twins. And the resilience of that operation, the resilience of the twins after that operation, much higher with adults, obviously a lot more concerns. This is going to be done in Singapore. We're hearing sometime the first week of July. Probably 100 doctors and nurses are going to be involved with something like this, everything from neurosurgeons to radiologists to anesthesiologist anesthesiologists to plastic surgeons. They're actually flying in a neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins, Dr. Ben Carson, who has performed these operations around the world before. This is going to be a very big deal in the world of neurosurgery, in part, because it's a very risky procedure, as well.

HEMMER: And what are the risks involved here?

GUPTA: Well, you know, you're doing significant amount of brain surgery. When you talk about these sorts of procedures, the thing that concerns doctors more than anything else, the thing that they will literally look at for weeks is the blood vessels and actually trying to get a sense of how these blood vessels are connected. These two twins, Lada (ph) and Lala (ph), may actually be sharing a significant blood vessel, a blood vessel that drains a lot of the brain from the blood. And a question may arise during the operation, how do you sort of untangle that blood vessel so that they can both still drain a significant amount of brain from the blood.

If you don't do it well, one or both of them might have a stroke afterwards or even die, and that's obviously the big concern. Again, a lot of the brain, as well in these two girls, just to give you another sense, the intricacies of this -- one of the girls connected on the left side of her head, and the other girl connected on the right side of her head.

Well, the left side of the brain is much more responsible for speech, for communication, things like that. The right side of the head more responsible for spatial relations. Do you leave a little bit more on the twin that has the left side of her head connected? How do you do that? It's all sort of intricate decisions, a lot of it made in the operating room -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Fascinating. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Sanjay, thank you.

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






Aired June 11, 2003 - 08:44   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: In this morning's "Paging Dr. Gupta" segment, historic surgery to separate two Iranian women who have been joined at the head for 29 years.
Sanjay is at CNN Center in Atlanta to tell us more about the risky procedure.

Sanjay, good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

You know, there are so few firsts in surgery anymore. But this certainly is one of them. We're talking about conjoined twins, which we've been hearing so much about, because of the Guatemalan twins. But imagine fast-forwarding that process 29 years. And you actually see two women, at 29 years old, educated women, Iranian women, who have been like that for their entire lives. Everything about them, the way they comb their hair every morning, the position of their head, the positions of their spines, all of that has been that way for 29 years. They were born January of 1974. They've been going through the testing for this, trying to figure out whether or not they can be separated since November of last year.

And just to reiterate, Daryn, this has never been done before, adult twins.

When we talk about conjoined twins, we often are talking about newborns or very, very young twins. And the resilience of that operation, the resilience of the twins after that operation, much higher with adults, obviously a lot more concerns. This is going to be done in Singapore. We're hearing sometime the first week of July. Probably 100 doctors and nurses are going to be involved with something like this, everything from neurosurgeons to radiologists to anesthesiologist anesthesiologists to plastic surgeons. They're actually flying in a neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins, Dr. Ben Carson, who has performed these operations around the world before. This is going to be a very big deal in the world of neurosurgery, in part, because it's a very risky procedure, as well.

HEMMER: And what are the risks involved here?

GUPTA: Well, you know, you're doing significant amount of brain surgery. When you talk about these sorts of procedures, the thing that concerns doctors more than anything else, the thing that they will literally look at for weeks is the blood vessels and actually trying to get a sense of how these blood vessels are connected. These two twins, Lada (ph) and Lala (ph), may actually be sharing a significant blood vessel, a blood vessel that drains a lot of the brain from the blood. And a question may arise during the operation, how do you sort of untangle that blood vessel so that they can both still drain a significant amount of brain from the blood.

If you don't do it well, one or both of them might have a stroke afterwards or even die, and that's obviously the big concern. Again, a lot of the brain, as well in these two girls, just to give you another sense, the intricacies of this -- one of the girls connected on the left side of her head, and the other girl connected on the right side of her head.

Well, the left side of the brain is much more responsible for speech, for communication, things like that. The right side of the head more responsible for spatial relations. Do you leave a little bit more on the twin that has the left side of her head connected? How do you do that? It's all sort of intricate decisions, a lot of it made in the operating room -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Fascinating. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Sanjay, thank you.

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