Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Paging Dr. Gupta: Conjoined Twins

Aired October 13, 2003 - 09:32   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.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Separated and stable, that's the good news for the 2-year-old Egyptian twin boys who had been joined at the top of the head. A giant first step, but again, just the first of a very long road to recovery.
Sanjay Gupta takes us through what he is most concerned with right now looking at this as a neurosurgeon yourself from the outside in.

Good morning, Sanjay.

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

Twenty-six hours to perform the operation, seven hours to close it, but more than a year in the planning. Looks like things are going fairly well so far.

It's been a long road, no question, for these 2-year-old twins. It's going to take a significant amount of time really to tell how these twins are going to do, whether they're going to be able to live a normal life at all.

Some details about the operation emerging, Bill. We've learned so much about this over the past several months now following several of these cases. I have a brain model here. I want to show you just a couple of things which are important to point out.

First of all, there's these significant veins. We've been talking about this so much, these veins that go sort of along the back of the brain in these twins, as they are the case in so many conjoined twins at the head. These veins were somewhat intertwined. That was a significant part of the operation.

What we're also hearing is that the left side of one of the twins' brain was very closely stuck was the word that the surgeons used, stuck to the right side of the brain of one of the other twins. That's significant as well. That left side of the brain having all sorts of different functions there, including the ability to not only communicate, but also receive speech. It's going to be some time really before it's clear just how well these twins are going to do.

One of the interests things I point out to folks sometimes, if you take a look at these pictures early on, it's a little bit hard to tell there, what they do, Bill, is they insert these tissue expanders underneath the skin, and what these tissue expanders do is they expand the skin so that that skin may, in fact, be used to close the wound at this point in the operation. Oftentimes there's not enough skin, so you just actually put these expanders underneath to generate a little bit more. That's one example of the many intricacies that went into the year-long planning of this sort of operation. Time will tell, the most important thing, as far as how they're going to do -- Bill.

HEMMER: Sanjay, I don't have much time. I apologize for that. At what point do you know that they're out of the woods, or do you?

GUPTA: I think it's going to be several weeks. These things are not measured in hours and days, but rather in weeks and months. They're in a barbiturate coma right now, which just basically means they're given a bunch of medications to keep them very much asleep. It's going to be hard to tell, in fact, at all anything, until they wake up from that coma which, will be at least several days in terms of their neurological function. So we've got awhile yet, Bill.

HEMMER: We'll talk about it throughout the week. Keep us posted. Thank you, Sanjay. Good to see 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 October 13, 2003 - 09:32   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Separated and stable, that's the good news for the 2-year-old Egyptian twin boys who had been joined at the top of the head. A giant first step, but again, just the first of a very long road to recovery.
Sanjay Gupta takes us through what he is most concerned with right now looking at this as a neurosurgeon yourself from the outside in.

Good morning, Sanjay.

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

Twenty-six hours to perform the operation, seven hours to close it, but more than a year in the planning. Looks like things are going fairly well so far.

It's been a long road, no question, for these 2-year-old twins. It's going to take a significant amount of time really to tell how these twins are going to do, whether they're going to be able to live a normal life at all.

Some details about the operation emerging, Bill. We've learned so much about this over the past several months now following several of these cases. I have a brain model here. I want to show you just a couple of things which are important to point out.

First of all, there's these significant veins. We've been talking about this so much, these veins that go sort of along the back of the brain in these twins, as they are the case in so many conjoined twins at the head. These veins were somewhat intertwined. That was a significant part of the operation.

What we're also hearing is that the left side of one of the twins' brain was very closely stuck was the word that the surgeons used, stuck to the right side of the brain of one of the other twins. That's significant as well. That left side of the brain having all sorts of different functions there, including the ability to not only communicate, but also receive speech. It's going to be some time really before it's clear just how well these twins are going to do.

One of the interests things I point out to folks sometimes, if you take a look at these pictures early on, it's a little bit hard to tell there, what they do, Bill, is they insert these tissue expanders underneath the skin, and what these tissue expanders do is they expand the skin so that that skin may, in fact, be used to close the wound at this point in the operation. Oftentimes there's not enough skin, so you just actually put these expanders underneath to generate a little bit more. That's one example of the many intricacies that went into the year-long planning of this sort of operation. Time will tell, the most important thing, as far as how they're going to do -- Bill.

HEMMER: Sanjay, I don't have much time. I apologize for that. At what point do you know that they're out of the woods, or do you?

GUPTA: I think it's going to be several weeks. These things are not measured in hours and days, but rather in weeks and months. They're in a barbiturate coma right now, which just basically means they're given a bunch of medications to keep them very much asleep. It's going to be hard to tell, in fact, at all anything, until they wake up from that coma which, will be at least several days in terms of their neurological function. So we've got awhile yet, Bill.

HEMMER: We'll talk about it throughout the week. Keep us posted. Thank you, Sanjay. Good to see 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