Mechanical heart plan for Siamese twin

Published on Monday 7 March 2005 11:47

SURGEONS in China who are preparing to separate conjoined twin boys will let one keep their shared heart and give the other an artificial heart, it emerged today.

Doctors have said the risky surgery to separate the three-month-old boys should go ahead because they will die without it. They also share a liver and intestines.

"We will give one boy the heart and use a manmade heart for the other," said Dr Fan Huimin, a heart surgeon at Shanghai East Hospital.

German experts designed the artificial heart especially for infants, according to reports. The doctor would not give a date for the operation.

The boys, Lu Dongfei and Lu Dongxiang, were born December 14 in the eastern city of Hefei in Anhui Province. They are joined from their chest to their navels.

According to news reports, the boys were abandoned by relatives who didn’t tell their mother about their condition. Police later took the twins to an orphanage.