[Donut]

I don't know how to feel about this. I do know that when I heard of the first death a part of me hoped the second twin would die.


Ananova:
Surgeons in tears as Iranian twins die

The 29-year-old Iranian twins joined at the head have both died hours after being separated by surgeons in Singapore.

A hospital spokesman said medical teams finished separating Laleh and Ladan Bijani, but the women were left in a critical condition by the dangerous procedure. A nurse said: "Everyone upstairs is crying."

First to die was Ladan. Hospital officials said she had lost a lot of blood as the latest stage of the surgery was coming to a close. Then, a few hours later, an official announced: "The second one has died. We treated them like family because they had been here for seven months."

Surgeons began the operation on Sunday afternoon - warning that the operation could kill one or both. It was the first time experts had attempted to separate adult craniopagus twins - siblings born joined at the head - since the operation was first performed on infants in 1952.

The operation had been expected to last at least another 24 hours as a team of plastic surgeons grafted tissue taken from the thighs of the women over their brains to protect them, Dr Prem Kumar said.

The team of doctors had to contend with unstable pressure levels inside the twins' brains just before uncoupling them and cutting through the last bit of skull joining them, Kumar said.

He said surgeons at the Raffles Hospital has separated the brains millimetre by millimetre. "They have to be teased apart very slowly," he said. "Cut. Teased apart. Cut. Teased apart. In the process, you encounter a lot of blood vessels and other tissues."

On Monday, five neurosurgeons completed one of the most dangerous steps in the surgery by re-routing a shared vein and successfully attaching a vein graft from Ladan's thigh. German doctors told the twins in 1996 that the surgery was too dangerous because of the shared vein.

The operation was complicated further when the team discovered that the pressure in the twins' brains and circulatory system was fluctuating. Ladan Bijani had said before the operation: "If God wants us to live the rest of our lives as two separate, independent individuals, we will."

An international team of 28 doctors and about 100 medical assistants were enlisted for the surgery. The Iranian government says it will pay the £180,000 cost of the operation. After surgery, the twins had hoped to move back to Iran and live together while Laleh pursued journalism and Ladan worked as a lawyer.

[ 07-08-2003, 07:05 AM: Message edited by: Donut ]