Betul:
11-month-old conjoined twins Aradhana and Stuti were successfully separated after a day-long complex surgery on Wednesday in Betul, Madhya Pradesh. It took twelve hours for a team of 23 doctors and 11 nurses from across India and Australia to perform the exercise of separating their fused livers and removing their hearts from a common membrane cover.
The complicated surgical procedure was carried out at Missionary Hospital in Padhar here.
The mammoth operation has been made possible after NDTV viewers and readers of ndtv.com contributed over Rs. 10 lakhs for them.
The one-year-old sisters, who were joined at heart and liver, were wheeled into the operation theatre at around 8 am. The actual surgery began at 9 am and it lasted till around 9 pm, hospital sources said.
Stuti was first to be wheeled out of the operation theatre. Both have been kept on ventilators and they will be under close medical observation for about 48 hours, they said.
In a four-phase operation, the twins were first given anaesthesia. After nearly two hours, a team of surgeons separated their heart which was again transplanted into them in two pieces.
During the third phase, surgeons separated their livers through a critical surgery. In the last phase, their other body parts were separated and sealed as required under such surgeries, the sources said.
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.
Ironically, Aradhana and Stuti were abandoned and left in the hospital after they were born. Born into a poor family in Betul in Madhya Pradesh, their father, a farmer with barely two acres of land and their mother, said they were unable to figure out how to treat their twin daughters, who were joined at the chest. Since then, the girls have been looked after by the hospital nurses, doctors and staff.