ISLAMABAD, Dec 11: Doctors at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) succeeded in separating six-month-old conjoined twins, baby girls, after eight-hour-long operation at the Children Hospital here on Tuesday.

This kind of surgery is believed to have been undertaken for the first time in the country as the twins shared a number of organs which were successfully separated.

“Such sort of surgery is rare even in best hospitals in the world and the number of successful operations in these cases can be counted on finger tips,” Prof Zaheer Abbasi, head of the department of paediatric surgery, told Dawn.

The twins - Fatima and Maryam - had a very complicated fusion of organs and they were united at thorax and abdomen and also shared the covering membrane of heart called the pericardium, he added. They also shared the liver, gallbladder and small intestine, Dr Abbasi said, adding that through operation these organs were divided equally between the two babies.

He said on completion of the surgery the two babies were shifted to the ICU, adding that the first few days might be crucial because of the nature of the abnormality. However, the condition of the twins is so far stable.

They will be kept under observation at the ICU for a week and hopefully shifted to the ward afterwards, he added.

Usually this type of operation is conducted after the age of six months because if the surgery is carried out within six months, the chances of survival are meagre, the surgeon said.

Doctors had to take the operation in the early stages because one of the babies, Maryam, had associated congenital cardiac pathology and was much weaker than Fatima, he said.

Maryam had a hole in her heart and her health started deteriorating, Prof Abbasi said, adding that in such cases if one of conjoined babies died then the other one could not live for more than two or three hours.

He said that the hole in the heart would naturally be filled in three to four years. Another operation will be conducted if needed, Prof Abbasi added.

The conjoined twins were born in a hospital in Bannu after an operation on May 27.