The conjoined sisters who were separated last week at the Sant Joan de Déu hospital in Barcelona are in perfect condition, they will be able to lead a completely normal life and at the beginning of next week they will be transferred to their country of origin, Mauritania.
The Mauritanian Minister of Health, Naha Mint Hamdi Uld Muknas, has traveled to Barcelona to thank the hospital and the medical and surgical team for the care provided to the twins Khadija and Cherive, who were born on October 8 joined at the liver, with a single umbilical cord and a combined weight of 5.2 kilos.
The first operation to separate conjoined twins carried out in Sant Joan de Déu went optimally, according to the center's head of surgery, Xavier Tarrado. It lasted a total of five hours, a team of more than twenty people participated and none of the incidents foreseen in a very detailed prior simulation of the intervention were recorded.
“Each girl had her liver, the only organ they shared, but the livers were fused in the central part. The main possible complications were bleeding and bile leak, but they did not occur,” explained Tarrado. The second part of the intervention, consisting of the closure of the abdominal wall of both girls, was also carried out optimally, without the need for the use of prosthetic material.
The patients progressed very well. A few hours after surgery, mechanical ventilation could be removed and they began to feed relatively soon, detailed Ana Alarcón, head of the neonatology service. The girls have been at the plant since Tuesday, in the care of the relatives who have accompanied them, their mother and an uncle.
“We see the family in perfect conditions to take charge of care. We are coordinating follow-up in your country, which we believe will be simple; We do not think that they require our intervention,” she explained.
Alarcón was part of the mission that at the end of October transported the sisters on a flight from the Air Force's air evacuation unit from Nouakchott, capital of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, a mostly desert country in northwest Africa.
The plane picked up the girls from an ambulance at the foot of the runway, in the presence of the Mauritanian Minister of Health, and the flight to El Prat lasted four hours, a period in which they remained stable, under the control of two pediatricians and a nurse. The mother and uncle had flown the day before to receive them in Barcelona.
