No, this is not the National Enquirer. Baby Manar Maged in Egypt known as the 'two headed girl' had survived an earlier operation to remove a parasitic twin joined at her head. However, on Saturday, she passed away after succumbing to an infection in her brain. Maner was only 10 months old when surgeons operated on her for 13 consecutive hours and managed to successfully separate the parasitic twin. The twin seen in the photo was not expected to survive even with the surgery or with the passage of natural time. Physicians stated that the twin could do little more but blink and smile.The surgery was somewhat controversial in Egypt because it would have meant the certain death of the parasitic twin, which had no limbs, a partial torso and only a head. Reports suggest that there was some effort to halt the surgery on compassionate grounds. In the end, it was an infection that the surviving twin succumbed to.The Manar Maged case has been diagnosed as craniopagus parasiticus, an extremely rare condition where the embryo splits to form a twin but fails to develop separately and is attached to the head of the 'normal' embryo. There have been other known cases, such as a girl in the Dominican Republic, born in 2003, who did not survive the delicate and dangerous operation to remove the parasitic twin. The 2003 case involved an 8-week old baby who endured a complicated 11-hour operation to separate an undeveloped head of her twin. Doctors had warned after the surgery that the girl would be at great risk of infection or hemorrhaging.In this case, lead surgeon Dr. Jorge Lazareff opined that the girl lost a lot of blood in the operation, which apparently caused her to suffer a heart attack. Friends and family donated almost 4 gallons of blood for surgeons to use during the operation. Fully developed twins born conjoined at the head are extremely rare, accounting for one of every 2.5 million births, but parasitic twins, where one twin stops developing in the womb, are even rarer. Rebecca was the eighth documented case in the world of craniopagus parasiticus, doctors said. All the other infants documented to have had the condition died before birth, making Rebecca's surgery the first known operation of its kind. The afore-mentioned Egyptian case is recognized as the ninth.Without an operation, Rebecca would have barely been able to lift her head at 3 months old. Her doctors said the pressure from the second head, attached on top of the first and facing up, would have prevented her brain from developing.
Monday, April 27, 2009
PARASTiC TWiNS
No, this is not the National Enquirer. Baby Manar Maged in Egypt known as the 'two headed girl' had survived an earlier operation to remove a parasitic twin joined at her head. However, on Saturday, she passed away after succumbing to an infection in her brain. Maner was only 10 months old when surgeons operated on her for 13 consecutive hours and managed to successfully separate the parasitic twin. The twin seen in the photo was not expected to survive even with the surgery or with the passage of natural time. Physicians stated that the twin could do little more but blink and smile.The surgery was somewhat controversial in Egypt because it would have meant the certain death of the parasitic twin, which had no limbs, a partial torso and only a head. Reports suggest that there was some effort to halt the surgery on compassionate grounds. In the end, it was an infection that the surviving twin succumbed to.The Manar Maged case has been diagnosed as craniopagus parasiticus, an extremely rare condition where the embryo splits to form a twin but fails to develop separately and is attached to the head of the 'normal' embryo. There have been other known cases, such as a girl in the Dominican Republic, born in 2003, who did not survive the delicate and dangerous operation to remove the parasitic twin. The 2003 case involved an 8-week old baby who endured a complicated 11-hour operation to separate an undeveloped head of her twin. Doctors had warned after the surgery that the girl would be at great risk of infection or hemorrhaging.In this case, lead surgeon Dr. Jorge Lazareff opined that the girl lost a lot of blood in the operation, which apparently caused her to suffer a heart attack. Friends and family donated almost 4 gallons of blood for surgeons to use during the operation. Fully developed twins born conjoined at the head are extremely rare, accounting for one of every 2.5 million births, but parasitic twins, where one twin stops developing in the womb, are even rarer. Rebecca was the eighth documented case in the world of craniopagus parasiticus, doctors said. All the other infants documented to have had the condition died before birth, making Rebecca's surgery the first known operation of its kind. The afore-mentioned Egyptian case is recognized as the ninth.Without an operation, Rebecca would have barely been able to lift her head at 3 months old. Her doctors said the pressure from the second head, attached on top of the first and facing up, would have prevented her brain from developing.
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Fascinating and sad.
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