Conjoined Twins With Common Liver Separated

Two-month-old conjoined twin sisters from Kashmir who shared a common liver were separated by doctors at a Gurgaon hospital. Saboora and Safoora were joined at the abdomen and shared a common liver since birth. Liver Institute chairman and chief liver surgeon AS Soin of Medanta Hospital said, “This was one of the most challenging surgeries of my career. For one, there was the fear of the unknown — there is no described anatomy of a liver that is shared between two humans and there is no standard technique to split it.”

“The intestines of each were floating in the other’s body but the size of the liver was quite big so we could successfully separate them in a 60:40 ratio,” said Dr Neelam Mohan, director of paediatric gastroenterology at Medanta.

The twins were joined from abdomen in a type of fusion called omphalopagus. The team of 40 doctors first opened their joint abdominal wall, divided the common liver between the two and them reconstructed abdominal.

Dr Soin said, “The separation of the liver had a high risk of bleeding and the danger of landing up with an inadequately functioning liver in one or even both babies.”

The girls’ mother had got used to carrying both together. “Before surgery I could not even carry them on my lap as they were joined together. If one slept, the other cried. It was very difficult to manage the two,” said.

Source-Medindia