A UK-based neurosurgeon and his team performed a successful 14-hour surgery to separate 1-year-old conjoined twins. The twin girls, Mirha and Minal, were born last year in Pakistan, and shared vital blood vessels and brain tissue, which is called craniopagus twins. As a result, the surgery was delicate and had to be meticulously performed.
The surgery was planned and executed by a team of doctors in Turkey, which included local medics. It required two surgical stages that were performed over three months using technology that gave the team time to plan and practice.
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Doctors are feeling good about the girls' recovery.
“They’re making an excellent recovery, really wonderful,” UK-based surgeon Dr. Noor ul Owase Jeelani, told Sky News about the procedure. “They should be in a position to go back to Pakistan in a few weeks.”
Jeelani and his team performed the detailed 14-hour surgery on twin girls Mirha and Minal, using mixed reality technology to help separate the toddlers.
What is MR technology?
MR technology “combines 3D images with the physical world and is used to increase precision during complex operations. It enhances a surgeon’s view of a patient by mixing digital content — like 3D scans — while remaining in the real world,” Sky News explained.
The team created a high-definition model of the girls to help train the medics at the Turkish hospital where the surgery was performed. It gave them the opportunity to understand what was going to happen in the operating room, while also giving the UK team the opportunity to prepare for and rehearse the surgery.
The girls now have a new way forward.
“The technology developed to undertake this work makes a lot of the more routine surgeries we do, safer, less invasive and more effective,” Jeelani explained. “To be able to give these girls and their family a new future where they can live independently and enjoy their childhood is a special privilege.”
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This isn't the first of these complicated surgeries Jeelani has performed.
Jeelani has performed three surgeries involving conjoined twins in the last five years.
His work has been largely funded by Gemini Untwined, a charity he founded specifically to help raise money for children and twins with complex craniofacial issues, including conjoined twins. According to Gemini’s figures, 1 in 60,000 births results in conjoined twins, but only 5% of those are craniopagus children.
