Joined twins separated, doing well

MELBOURNE: Twin Bangladeshi girls who were joined at the top of their heads and shared blood vessels and brain tissue were successfully separated yesterday after 25 hours of delicate surgery, hospital officials said.

It is too early to know whether the 2-year-olds, Trishna and Krishna, suffered any brain damage during the marathon operation - an outcome doctors said had a 50-50 chance. The girls will remain in an induced coma for monitoring for several days after the completion of the surgery.

A team of 16 surgeons and nurses began the work on Monday morning on separating the girls, who were brought to Australia as infants by an aid organization. "The teams managed to separate their brains and they are both very well," Royal Children's Hospital chief Leo Donnan said. "Now we have the long task of the reconstructive surgery, which will go on for many hours."

Plastic surgeons finished reconstructing the girls' skulls using a combination of their own skin, bone grafts and artificial materials about five hours after the separation surgery ended.

"Their bodies have to recover from this, and we've got a lot of unknown territory we're moving into," Donnan said.

AP

(Edit:Ruby)