2023-07-25 16:55:21
Photo credit, Courtesy of N’Djamena Mother and Child Hospital
image caption,
The two twins following their separation on Friday July 21, 2023
Article informationAuthor, Ibrahim ZongoRole, BBC News Afrique
18 minutes ago
In Chad, a medical team from the Mother and Child Hospital successfully carried out an operation to separate two Siamese babies on Friday July 21, 2023.
This is a first in the country for an operation involving real Siamese, explained Dr. Olivier Ngaringuem who participated in the operation. “We have already dealt with false Siamese. That is to say that one of the Siamese is not complete and lives at the expense of the other, therefore a parasite”, he explains.
According to specialists, the birth of Siamese is a rare event. “The Siamese is one in one hundred and fifty thousand (1/150,000) live births,” he says.
The Mother and Child Hospital has in the past separated five (5) False Siamese. In these cases, “when the separation is carried out, the life of one automatically stops and the other continues”.
For the first time the two babies have been saved and are in stable condition, says Dr Olivier Ngaringuem. “Both are stable, no fever, the pain is under control because there is a team that comes every six hours to assess the pain and do the anthalgia,” says Dr Ngaringuem.
Photo credit, Courtesy of Dr Olivier Ngaringuem
image caption,
Dr Olivier Ngaringuem took part, at the head of a surgical team, in the operation to separate the conjoined twins
Local expertise in action
Photo credit, Courtesy of N’Djamena Mother and Child Hospital
image caption,
The separation operation was carried out by this team
The intervention consisted in separating two twins united by a part of the body. The two girls who were on their sixth day of life were bound by the inner wall of the abdomen.
After determining the organs in common and the type of operation to be carried out thanks to information from the various scanners, the team decided to conduct the separation operation on Friday July 22 at 9am (local time).
Teams made up of radiologists, paediatricians, anesthesiologists and surgeons were formed to conduct the operation.
“Two teams, each led by an anesthetists, have been set up. Two others led by surgeons have also been set up,” says Dr Olivier Ngaringuem, who led one of the surgical teams.
However, he says, the team of anesthetists has been strengthened by the participation of an anesthetist from the N’Djamena General Hospital. The Mother and Child Hospital has only one anesthesiologist.
The staff thus mobilized worked “together on the separation and then the two teams went their separate ways (with a baby) and the intervention continued”.
A step forward for medicine in Chad
Photo credit, Courtesy of N’Djamena Mother and Child Hospital
image caption,
Siamese twins were bound by the inner wall of the abdomen
Managing to separate two Siamese was “a challenge” for the medical team. “The real Gordian knot of this problem was the anesthesia. But currently, I think everything has gone well,” says Dr Ngaringuem.
This extremely rare operation, according to the surgeon, is proof “that specialists here in the country can do something”. Most, he believes, are educated in large African schools.
“Now back here, we are sometimes faced with a technical plateau that is not very well raised,” he explains. But, “little by little, I think, things are being done,” he concludes.
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