The conjoined twins, baby boys, were born on 27th July. Doctor said that both the mother and twins are healthy now. The 26 year old mother realised that she was carrying conjoined twins in her 7th month of pregnancy and since then, she had been kept in the hospital under observation.
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Unfortunately for the parents, making the grave decision is not the only one they have to battle. The family lives in Sion Chawl.
“We are fortunate to have Dr Paras Kothari, who has successfully operated on many conjoined twins”.
“Externally they have two separate heads and necks, but a partially common thorax, and are completely fused below the umbilicus level”, he said.
A set of conjoined twins – born with a common heart – will not be rushed into surgery, said doctors at the civic-run LTMG Sion Hospital. “The babies were prematurely born”, said Dr YS Nandanwar, head of the gynaecology department in Sion hospital.
‘But without a surgery none of them would survive.
Conjoined twins are a rare case and occur around once in every two hundred thousand births. Approximately 40-60% of conjoined twins arrive stillborn, and about 35% survive only one day.
‘Overall, rarely 5-25 per cent of these babies survive.
The condition of the child is called dicephalic parapagus, an extremely rare form of twin conjoinment where they grow in a single body. They were on their way to Mumbai’s Sion Hospital for surgery. “He will be the leader of a vast team of specialists and super specialists which has been assigned the task of planning the future course of action for these conjoined twins”, said Merchant. This team includes pediatric surgeons, neonatologists, pediatric cardiac surgeons and pediatric anesthetists etc. “The operation to separate the baby is not decided as yet since we haven’t discovered what all organs have complications”.
Doctors at Sion Hospital have warned that the twins are unlikely to survive separation surgery due to how fully conjoined they are.
Dr. Anil Moore told, “The patient had come to our hospital for a sonography to detect abnormalities in the foetus and was informed of the twins being conjoined”.
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Merchant said, “We have evaluated this complex anatomy by our multi slice CT scanner”. Our 3 Tesla MRI Scanner has also been utilized for investigations.
