Conjoined Twin Fights for Life After Israel Surgery
A conjoined twin in Israel who was separated in a rare operation is in serious condition.
The Rambam Medical Center in Haifa said the twins were separated last week in a four-hour operation. It was believed to be the first time the separation surgery had ever been attempted in Israel.
One twin, born stillborn, had not fully developed and had no chance of life as he was fused into his brother’s body.
The survivor, who is fighting for his life, had another pelvis, legs, arms, kidney and digestive system. He also has a heart defect, which is common to conjoined twins.
“This kind of surgery is incredibly complicated, with low survival rates,” said Dr. Ran Steinberg, the head of pediatric surgery at Rambam. “In many cases, as here, the twin also suffers from accompanying heart defects, which further endangers the infant’s life.”
Only 150 cases of similarly conjoined twins have been documented in the last 126 years.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO