New Delhi, October 4
Ten-year-old conjoined twins Sabah and Farah from Bihar could not have asked for
more. They have got the green signal for surgical separation from internationally renowned paediatric neurosurgeon Dr Benjamin Carson and 21 senior consultants of Indraprasatha Apollo hopsital.
Announcing the historic move to “take up the phenomenal challenge'' subject to a post-Ramzan decision of the twins' parents, the Director, Medical Services, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Dr Anupam Sibal, said: “It is an important moment in Indian medical history when we believe that we can separate Sabah and Farah. We believe that we have the technology and the expertise to pull it off with a certain degree of confidence. It will be a long drawn procedure extending into the autumn of 2006.”
As of now, doctors at Apollo don't know how much the surgery would cost. Dr Sibal says the last time such an operation was done in the world, it had cost one million dollars that translates to about Rs 4.5 crore.
For Mohd. Shakeel Ahmed, the twins' father who runs a tea stall at Patna station, the surgery was unthinkable. Luckily, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahayan, read a report on the twins and offered to bear the cost of evaluation and treatment
Speaking about the challenge involved in the surgery, Dr Sibal said separation of the brain circulatory systems is of prime concern. The girls share a major blood drainage vessel in the brain and the surgical team may need to graft blood vessels taken from other parts of their bodies to give them individual drainage system.
Dr Carson, who is Director, Neurosurgery at John Hopkins Children's Center, USA, said these type of operations are extraordinarily complex and a lot of planning takes place before they are done. “We have looked at the preliminary data. More studies will be needed. Each step carries a risk.... We are planning the surgery in such a way that we expect both of them would be alive.”
Replying to a question on previous surgeries that have been unsuccessful, Dr Carson said, “If you look at the history of surgeries in the world, just about everything has problems associated with it. Nothing is a failure if you learn from it and move forward.”
