Melbourne: A team of Australian surgeons have successfully separated three-year-old joined-at-the-head Bangladeshi twins Krishna and Trishna after a marathon 24-hour risky surgery.
The team of 16 surgeons and nurses at the Melbourne`s Royal Children`s Hospital began the surgery yesterday morning on separating the girls, who were brought to Australia by the Children First foundation Trust in January last year.
"Everything we have done has gone successfully," hospital spokesman Leo Donnan told reporters. He said the girls were separated at 11:00 am local time.
"To see them as separate human beings is pretty special," Donnan was quoted by ABC as saying.
The girls would now be kept sedated for a number of days before being slowly woken up.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime operation," he said.
"There was relief but I think everyone realised there was still a long way to go and that the girls have a very difficult time ahead of them.
"Now we have the long task of the reconstruction surgery which will go on for many hours. We can`t predict how long it will take."Plastic surgeons will now close their skulls with bone and skin tissue to prevent infection, with Trishna and Krishna expected to stay in an induced coma for several days.
"The girls` physiological condition has improved over the operations, but their bodies now have to recover.
"Everything is in place for the best possible outcome," Donnan said.
With the plastic surgeons completing the surgical work, Donnan declined to say when the operation would be declared finished.
Head separation surgeries are rare, in 2003 doctors in Singapore failed to separate two adult Iranian twins who died from severe blood loss after 52 hours operation.
Bureau Report