Bangladeshi conjoined twins Trishna and Krishna appeared yesterday to have beaten the odds with their miracle story of survival, both awaking from landmark separation surgery healthy.
As they faced the prospect of looking at each other face-to-face for the first time, the successful separation of the two-year-olds, who were born joined at the head, has been hailed as a medical triumph.
Their guardian, Moira Kelly, who has cared for the girls since their arrival in Australia two years ago, said it was hoped that the children’s cots could be brought together soon so they could touch each other.
“They’re too weak to look at each other, they’re too sleepy so we’re not there for that yet, but we’re early days and you know, take it day by day,” said Kelly, from the Children First Foundation charity.
Krishna and Trishna, who turn three next month, were separated by a 16-member medical team on Tuesday and are recovering slowly from the 32-hour marathon surgery at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.
Trishna woke up on Thursday but Krishna, the weaker of the pair, emerged fully from the medically induced coma on Saturday. Both appear to be neurologically sound.
“Krishna was on my lap and I said I wasn’t going to move anywhere, and I had her on my lap for a couple of hours and it was the first time she’d ever been held on her own,” Kelly said. “I mean you can’t even imagine — any human being, you don’t have to be a mother, just a human being to realize how special that was.”
Trishna and Krishna were delivered to the Mother Teresa orphanage in Dhaka shortly after their birth. Australian aid workers realized they faced certain death without help and began the process of bringing them to Australia for medical care.
When they arrived in Melbourne two years ago, the twins were gravely ill. They were nursed back to health and underwent a series of operations in preparation for the separation surgery.
Mark Gianoutsos, who runs the cranio-facial unit at Sydney Children’s Hospital, said Trishna and Krishna had overcome the odds many times in their short lives.
Only 22 cases similar to that of the twins had been described in medical literature by 1987, each one uniquely complex.
“It’s very rare. Twins joined at the head is the rarest of the conjoined twins. It’s about one in two to two-and-a-half million live births,” he told reporters.
Even then, about 30 percent of these twins do not live more than about a week because of organ failures and other complications, and of those who do survive, the majority are not suitable for surgical treatment.
Trishna and Krishna were particularly lucky that the anatomy of the veins in their brains was favorable for their separation, he said.
Even so, doctors stressed that the chances of both twins surviving the marathon surgery without sustaining brain damage was only 25 percent.
The most dangerous phase of the treatment has passed, but the girls face the risk of infection and their bodies must learn to operate independently after almost three years of sharing kidney, stomach and blood pressure systems.
News of the twins’ separation traveled around the world, with the twins’ biological mother telling reporters she was “overjoyed” that her girls were doing well.
“No mother in the world could be as proud as me. I always knew that they would get separated,” 22-year-old Lovely Mallick said.
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