Following a 12-hour surgery involving 78 medical personnel, the National Hospital, Abuja, recorded its first successful conjoined twins operation. The
Following a 12-hour surgery involving 78 medical personnel, the National Hospital, Abuja, recorded its first successful conjoined twins operation. The conjoined twins that had one liver, a protruding tummy and a lower chest. The twins were both delivered at the Federal Medical Hospital, Keffi, Nasarawa State before they were referred to the NHA.
The leader of the team that performed the surgery, Prof Emmanuel Ameh, said the twins had to be monitored for 15 months before the separation was done. He said, “We received the twins on August 14, 2018 and quickly constituted an inter-disciplinary team, including pediatric surgeons, cardiac surgeons, plastic surgeons, nurses, imaging experts, dermatologists and other experts from various medical disciplines, as well as support staff.
“One of the major challenges was that the twins came with their intestines bulging out of the lower part of the tummy, which we quickly resolved. We also needed to determine if they could survive separately after separation. We found out that they had two separate hearts that were normal, but with a common cover. They also shared the lower half of the chest and there was only one liver serving the two of them. Other organs were separate and normal.”
Ameh added that before the surgery, the twins needed to grow well in order to withstand the complex surgery. He noted that nutrition and infection control were critical in the preparation. He added, “We celebrated their first birthday in the ward still conjoined. The surgery was performed on November 14, 2019. By that time, they were 15 months-old. After that, the twins spent a week at the Intensive Care Unit before they were taken to the ward.”
Medical Director of the hospital, Dr Jaf Momoh, said that the parents of the twins would have spent more than N20m if they could afford travelling abroad, adding that the hospital took care of all the bills. He said, “The cost of running a hospital is enormous. The average electricity bill of the National Hospital is about N19m every month. That is why we collect money. We took it upon ourselves to mobilise resources and invest it on the twins. If the parents had the means, they would have gone abroad like some other Nigerians and spent at least an equivalent of N20m in foreign currency. It is cheaper doing the surgery here. We cannot quantify the amount spent on the surgery.”
It was not the first time that conjoined twins were separated in a similar operation in a Nigerian hospital. On May 14, 2018, a team of surgeons successfully separated four-month-old conjoined twins at the Federal Medical Centre, Yola. Also, the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital on June 11 2018, announced that it has separated a conjoined twins referred to the centre from the St. Mary Catholic Hospital, Gwagalada, Abuja.
