Siamese twins come face to face

Published on Sunday 26 October 2003 01:00

SIAMESE twins born joined together at the head have seen each other for the first time since surgery to separate them two weeks ago.

Two-year-old Mohamed Ibrahim was more awake than brother Ahmed and seemed to recognise his sibling after he was taken in a red wagon into Ahmed’s room, said Dr James Thomas, chief of critical care at the Children’s Medical Centre in Dallas, Texas.

"He was clearly delighted by the ride and when he saw his brother for the first time since surgery he stared at him intently," Thomas said in a statement. "Those present for the encounter, including his parents, indicated Mohamed appeared to recognise his brother."

It will take several weeks to determine if the boys, who are from Egypt, suffered brain damage in the operation in which a team of five neurosurgeons separated their shared brain material as well as the shared circulatory systems that fed blood to their brains.

The boys were born in a town 500 miles south of Cairo on June 2, 2001.