Betul’s conjoined twins separated after marathon 12 hour surgery

Stuti and Aradhna were twins attached to each other. Literally. Yesterday, a team of 34 medical experts – including 23 doctors from India and abroad operated upon them for 12 long hours to separate them. The complicated surgical procedure was carried out at Missionary Hospital in Padhar in Madhya Pradesh. The 11 month old sisters, who were joined at the at heart and liver, were wheeled into the operation room at 8 am and the actual surgery lasted for a marathon 12 hours – from 9 am to 9 pm.

Both of them have been kept on ventilators after the operation and will be kept under close medical observation for the next 48 hours. It was a four-phase operation. The twins were first given anaesthesia and after two hours the team of surgeons separated their heart which was then transplanted into them into them in two pieces.

In the third phase their livers were separated while the last phase had the doctors separating their other body parts which were then sealed as required.

Stuti was finally separated from Aradhna and was kept in NICU, while Aradhna remained inside the operation theatre. Hospital Superintendent Dr Rajiv Choudhry expressed satisfaction over the surgery and said he was happy with the outcome.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had paid Rs 20 lakh from the Chief Minister’s discretionary fund for the duo’s expensive surgery. The sisters were born on May 2, 2011 to Maya Yadav, a resident of Chudiya village under Chicholi block of Betul district.

Since the woman and her husband, a poor farmer, were unable to bear the huge expenses required for the delicate surgery, asked the hospital for help. The hospital management readily accepted them and decided to go for the surgery for which they contacted doctors, some of them from abroad.  The group of doctors that performed the surgery included Albert Shoon, Gordan Thomas, Sanjeev Peter and Dhruv Ghosh.  The team also included medical experts from Australia, Ludhiana, Chennai, Gujarat, Vellore (Tamil Nadu) and Bangalore.

This was perhaps first such surgery performed in Madhya Pradesh and the operation had attracted a lot of public and media attention. Even as the operation was on, people in large numbers gathered outside the hospital, other parts of the city and also the state and prayed for the success of the surgery and well-being of the two girls.

Update: Twins doing well