Surgery a success as joined twins separated

Published on Tuesday 22 July 2003 01:00

A PAIR of infant Korean sisters connected at the lower back were successfully separated today at Singapore’s Raffles Hospital - just two weeks after the hospital’s failed attempt to separate a pair of conjoined Iranian twins.

The four-month-old Korean twins, Sa Rang and Ji Hye, were separated at 2.40pm local time.

The girls were due to undergo plastic and reconstructive surgery this afternoon.

Dr Prem Kumar gave no information on the girls’ condition, except to say the separation part of the surgery had been completed.

The twins were fused at the pelvis, the lower end of their spine and the lower end of their intestinal tract, doctors said.

Doctors were afraid that if the twins were not separated they would develop severe skull and spinal deformities because of the way they would have been forced to position themselves.

A local newspaper reported that the twins’ father, Min Seong-Joon, was told by surgeons his daughters had an 85 per cent chance of survival. The procedure comes just two weeks after a team of surgeons from Raffles Hospital failed to separate Ladan and Laleh Bijani, Iranian twins born joined at the head.

The Bijani sisters met with the family of the infant Korean twins in June and encouraged them to go ahead with the surgery.

The Korean twins are the third set of conjoined twins to undergo risky separation surgery in Singapore in two years.

Surgeons separated two 18-month-old Nepalese twins joined at the head in 2001.