Haifa hospital performs rare separation of conjoined twins

In an extremely rare operation, doctors at a Haifa hospital this week successfully separated newborn conjoined twin brothers, it was reported on Wednesday. One of the brothers was only partially developed and had no chance of survival, the hospital said, while the fully developed brother survived the procedure but remained in critical condition.

The complex, four-hour procedure at Rambam Medical Center, which the hospital said was the first of its kind in Israel, involved a large team of specialists, many of whom were called in at the last minute.

Ynet reported that the mother, whose identity was not disclosed, was not aware that she was carrying conjoined twins when she came in to give birth. The decision to perform the separation operation was only made once the situation became apparent during her pre-birth examination.

After the birth, the twins immediately underwent a CT scan to determine exactly how they were connected, and the surgical team was assembled.

The specific condition of the twins was a very rare type where a fully developed sibling is fused with a partially developed one. In this case, the partially developed twin possessed a pelvis, legs, arms, kidney and digestive system only, and the two brothers shared a liver, which the doctors were able to keep with the surviving brother.

The doctors grafted the skin of the partially formed sibling to cover the survivor’s deformities.

“This kind of surgery is incredibly complicated, with low survival rates,” said Ran Steinberg, head of pediatric surgery at Rambam, who oversaw the operation. He called the procedure “a complete success” but said that “in many cases, as here, the twin also suffers from accompanying heart defects, which further endangers the infant’s life.”

The surviving infant remained in critical but stable condition in the neonatal intensive care unit Wednesday.

According to Rambam Medical Center, in more than a century of records there have been only 150 confirmed cases of similarly conjoined twins in the world.