1-year-old conjoined twins separated after 12-hr surgery at AIIMS

Conjoined twins Riddhi and Siddhi, who were born last year and were joined from the chest and stomach, were successfully separated in a surgery that lasted over 12 hours at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, doctors said on Wednesday. Minu Bajpai, head of the department of paediatric surgery at AIIMS, said the twins were diagnosed as ‘thoraco-omphalopagus conjoined twins’ in the fourth month of pregnancy, following which the family, originally from Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly, was referred to AIIMS to ensure that a they received a proper treatment plan for the girls’ birth and eventual separation. Doctors said that while the actual surgery went on for nearly nine hours, it took another 3.5 hours for pre- and post-surgery anaesthesia. This is not the first such successful surgery at AIIMS — in 2017, doctors at the institute successfully separated Jagannath and Balaram from Odisha, who were craniopagus twins.