CNA Staff, Jul 8, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Twins who were conjoined at the head are likely to return home within months from the Vatican’s pediatric hospital where their bodies were successfully separated by doctors, and they have a high chance of living normal lives, the hospital’s chief neurosurgeon told CNA.
The Bambino Gesù Hospital announced the successful separation surgery July 7, saying it was the first operation of its kind in Italy and probably the world.
Separate due gemelle siamesi unite per la testa. È il primo intervento di questo tipo in Italia e, probabilmente, l’unico al mondo per una delle più rare e complesse forme di fusione a livello cranico e cerebrale. Oggi stanno bene e possono crescere come le bimbe della loro età pic.twitter.com/1S3YwHkuq8
— Bambino Gesù (@bambinogesu) July 7, 2020
The final stage of surgery, which took place on June 5, lasted 18 hours and involved more than 30 medical staff. The two-year-old sisters are expected to make a full recovery.
“We have been able to accomplish an extraordinary result despite such a complex malformation, being able to separate with an optimal clinical result. From a neurological standpoint, the two little girls are doing very well and have excellent prognosis for normal lives in the future,” Dr. Carlo Efisio Marras, director of neurosurgery of the Bambino Gesù hospital told CNA July 8.
“This accomplishment is the fruit of more than a yearlong work of investigation and preparation involving several specialties and professions within the hospital. There were many difficult phases since several surgical procedures were needed, each one with its own challenges,” Marras told CNA
“But the most difficult one involved the venous system, that is, the network of vases that brings blood from the heart to the brain to bring oxygen to it. If we would have not succeeded in deal with this system shared by both babies, the result would had been catastrophic.”
“But the two little twins are well: we believe they can be released in a few months. They will have to go through a rehabilitation phase to learn the motions they were not able to perform previously. I wholeheartedly wish them a happy future. They are now in the condition to return to a normal life.”
“I have to thank my hospital, which is known for bringing together research, development and solidarity, for this extraordinary experience,” Marras added.
The hospital said the twins, Ervina and Prefina, were born on June 29, 2018 in a village about 60 miles outside Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. They were joined together with “one of the rarest and most complex forms of cranial and cerebral fusion,” known as total posterior craniopagus.
Mariella Enoc, president of the Bambino Gesù, met the twins in July 2018, during a visit to Bangui, where the sisters had been transferred after their birth. Enoc was helping to oversee the expansion of pediatric services in the country, which is one of the world’s poorest, in response to an appeal from Pope Francis. She decided to bring the girls to Rome for surgery.
“When you encounter lives that can be saved, it must be done. We cannot and must not look away,” she said at a press conference Tuesday.
The twins arrived in Italy with their mother, Ermine, on September 10, 2018. Initial tests confirmed the sisters were healthy, but had different blood pressures, indicating that one of the girls’ hearts had to work harder to maintain the healthy functioning of their organs, including their brains.
The hospital said the twins were joined via the back of the head, including the nape, sharing both skin and cranial bones. But the greatest challenge for doctors was that they were joined at a deeper level, sharing membranes inside the skull as well as the venous system, through which blood used by the brain is transported back to the heart.
The hospital emphasized that the sisters had distinct personalities, describing Prefina as “playful and lively,” and Ervina as “more serious and observant.”
A multidisciplinary team, including neurosurgeons, anesthesiologists, and plastic surgeons, prepared for more than a year for the operation to separate the twins. The hospital’s ethics committee contributed to a plan ensuring that the girls would have the same quality of life.
The separation took place in three stages. In the first, in May 2019, neurosurgeons started to separate and rebuild the membranes and venous systems.
The second, a month later, focused on the confluence of sinuses in the brain. The hospital said it was a critical phase of the treatment as “the operating space is a few millimeters.”
The two operations prepared the girls for the third and final phase of complete separation on June 5.
“It was an exciting moment, a fantastic, unrepeatable experience. It was a very ambitious goal and we did everything we could to achieve it, with passion, optimism and joy. By sharing each step, studying every single detail together,” Marras said.
Bambino Gesù, colloquially known as the “Pope’s hospital,” is among the most important pediatric hospitals in the world. Founded in 1869 by the Duchess Arabella Salviati, the hospital was donated to Pius XI in 1924, with the aim of giving it a more stable future. While the hospital is located in Rome, rather than Vatican City, it is situated in an extraterritorial area administered by the Holy See.
The hospital said Tuesday: “A month after the final separation, the twins are doing well. … On June 29 they celebrated their second birthdays, looking into each other’s eyes, moving their little hands to the rhythm of music, in the arms of their mother.”
“They have undergone very difficult operations; the wounds will take some time to heal; the risk of infection is still present. The neurorehabilitation program continues and for a few months they will have to wear a protective helmet.”
“But post-operative checks indicate that the brain is intact. The recreated system works, the blood flow has adapted to the new path.”
Speaking at the press conference, the girl’s mother, Ermine, said: “If we had stayed in Africa I don’t know what fate they would have had. Now that they are separate and well, I would like them to be baptized by Pope Francis who has always taken care of the children of Bangui. My little ones can now grow up, study and become doctors to save other children.”
[…]
Francis said there was a Spanish saying that “God forgives always; we men forgive sometimes; the earth never forgives.”
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I’ve always heard that as “Nature” never forgives. And that doesn’t portray nature as a loving mother but rather as something affected by the results of a fallen world: disease, famine, natural disasters, etc.
We suffer the natural consequences of some of our poor choices.
To be clear, the virus sent to the rest of the world by the Communist government of China is not nature’s punishment for the “sin” of “climate change.” Some of the statements coming from the Holy Father beggar belief. Interestingly, the government of China, with which this papacy has such amiable relations, has not come in for any criticism from the Vatican during this crisis. On the other hand, Francis has not been able to restrain himself from taking veiled swipes at Trump. Pretty telling, I’d say.
In his urgent and strategic efforts to beckon very disparate and fragmented “movements” toward a more moral commonwealth, the Holy Father makes very good points–but from time to time is he perhaps too ambiguous(?).
Do we really “sin” against the earth? And do we really engage only when “our children take to the streets to teach us the obvious”? Did St. John Paul II make the same points–also in an evangelizing and well-grounded way (and less earthy, shall we say), when he wrote:
“Man remains above all a being who seeks the truth and strives to live in the truth, deepening his understanding through dialogue which involves past and future [both!] generations” (Centesimus Annus, 1191, n.49). And, without seemingly conflating the two spheres by poetic license, he too drew urgent attention to both the endangered “natural ecology” and the related but also distinct—-and sinned against—-members of the “human ecology” (nn. 37-40).
“We have sinned against the earth” implies a living person. We can sin against a brother who has a soul created in God’s image. Figuratively. We actually sin against God when we sin against our brother. As the Pope acknowledges. As an afterthought and nuance of ambiguity. Yes we should care for our common home. If we misuse the planet, dump our garbage, old vehicle down a ravine we sin against God not the planet. Nevertheless love for our common home as couched clashes with Christ’s admonition against [an excessive] love of this world. The Earth Day prayer has that connotation when viewed in context. Goddess of the Andes veneration cannot be dismissed. Earth Day “is an occasion for renewing our commitment to love and care for our common home and for the weaker members of our human family.” Nothing is said here, very little is said elsewhere about the millions upon millions of infants murdered in the womb. Jeffrey Sachs is chosen as a Vatican consultant on the Family. Obviously not in an effort to care for those who are actually the most weak and vulnerable. There’s an exaggerated emphasis on ecological concern that makes “love and care for our common home” suggest a competitive love with the divinity. Is such exaggerated ecological concern, though not necessarily intentional albeit idolatry in disguise? If so then this must be addressed and set right.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-27/china-ghost-cities-show-growth-driven-by-debt/9912186
It is, indeed, ironic to hold a conference on biodiversity in China. Perhaps, it is to prove a point of the destruction the country made over the decades when building massive cities that NO ONE lives in. Just think of the swats of land cleared for all those projects!
We are privileged to be living on God’s Holy Ground.