19/03/2012

A multidisciplinary team from Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, with the participation of Dr. Jose Luis Peiró and Dr. Vicenç Martínez Ibañez, from the group of bioengineering, orthopedics and surgery pediatrics at Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), has separated successfully two Siamese sisters of seven months of age who were born joined by the abdomen and who were sharing the liver. The surgery lasted less than seven hours, was made on February 27 and the girls could come back home rightly one week later, on March 5. Nowadays, they only visit the Hospital for the periodic reviews.Núria and Marta were born on August 10, 2011, with 32 weeks of gestation. The malformation had been detected to 12 weeks of gestation in the habitual ultrasound scans during the pregnancy. It was decided to make a Caesarean planned to guarantee the survival of the fetuses and to avoid the predictable complications of the childbirth to the mother.After the birth, in spite of being joined by the abdomen, they had a very favorable evolution in the neonatal period and after making the first detailed study of the case, and of verifying that they could feed and grow with normality, they went home while waiting for the best moment for the surgery of separation: between five months and the first year of life (and also to the moment their total weight was superior to 12 kilos), to minimize to the maximum the risk.