Craniopagus twins were successfully separated in a rare and complex operation at Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva on Thursday, the first surgery of its kind in Israel.
Craniopagus twins are the rarest type of conjoined twins and surgery to separate them has only been carried out 20 times throughout the world.
The surgery, which lasted for over 16 hours and cost about NIS 7 million, was carried out by about 50 Soroka medical professionals in conjunction with international experts. The babies are now awake, are moving their limbs and are eating normally.
The twins were born at Soroka in August 2020, joined at the head but with separate brains.
“The twins were born a year ago and since then we’ve been monitoring them and preparing for the surgery,” Dr. Yafa Ashur, the Deputy Director of Soroka, told Army Radio on Sunday. “It wasn’t easy. Thankfully, their brains weren’t attached but the entire cerebral cortex and blood vessels were shared.”
הד"ר יפה אשור, סגנית מנהל סורוקה, אצל @amirivgi: "התינוקות ערות, אוכלות, ומזיזות את הגפיים. זאת הפעם הראשונה בחייהן שהן הושכבו פנים מול פנים, וחוו מה זה לראות את אחותך התאומה. כולנו התרגשנו"
(צילום: דוברות סורוקה) pic.twitter.com/zCDi3LMjhD— גלצ (@GLZRadio) September 5, 2021
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
Whoever translated Dr. Yafa Ashur’s comment does not know Hebrew, English, or basic biology. מעטפת המוח does not mean “cerebral cortex”. It means the lining of the brain (meninges).