15/07/2020
MIRACLE: 2 Year-Old Twins Whose Brains Were Joined Together At Birth Survive Separation Surgery
Strange But TrueJul 9, 2020Read original
A pair of conjoined twins, who were fused together by their skulls, have been separated in complex and groundbreaking surgery.
How on earth can a set of twins be born while still conjoined together?
Well, it all happens in the premature stages of fertilization. The twins will then continue to grow and develop in the womb, all while conjoined together.
However, their chances of survival during and after birth is slim. But, thanks to advances in medical research and technology
2-year-old twins, Ervina and Prefina, were born in 2018 conjoined by their skulls.
The sisters, who were born in Mbaiki, Central African Republic, were fully joined at the head and shared a series of critical blood vessels around their brains.
Because of this, the thought of attempting to separate them was daunting for their mother, Ermine Nzotto.
However, surgeons at the Vatican-owned Bambino Gesu Paediatric Hospital in Rome felt up to the challenge.
The sisters were brought to Italy after the hospital's president met the twins and their mother at a medical center where they were born.
And tests conducted at the hospital showed that the twins were generally in good health, but that one sister’s heart was working harder to maintain the “physiological balance of the organs of both, including the brain.”
And the greatest challenge facing the team of specialists – which included neurosurgeons, anesthesiologists, neuroradiologists, plastic surgeons, engineers, and physiotherapists – was the shared network of blood vessels bringing blood from the girls’ brains to their hearts, the hospital said in a statement.
Because of this, the separation required "3 very delicate operations to progressively reconstruct two independent venous systems."
And the final surgery, which took place on June 5th this year, took a solid eighteen hours and involved thirty
