Further surgery likely to separate Labiba-Lamisa after 6-8 weeks

Due to complications with their reproductive organs, doctors at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) had to stop the first phase of surgery to separate conjoined twins Labiba and Lamisa after a four-hour-long operation.

To avoid risk, doctors did not separate the conjoined twin toddlers completely. Hopefully this will be done in another surgery after six to eight weeks, doctors say.

A 32-member team did the four hour surgery to separate the twins, at 8am on Monday.

After finishing the first phase of surgery, the medical board members talked to the media.

"Due to complications with their reproductive organs, we have just set a tissue expander today. We will wait six to eight weeks to do the surgery again and wish to complete it at that time," said Prof Dr Asraf Ul Haque, head of paediatric surgery at DMCH who leads the 32-member surgery team.

The two-and-a-half-year-old girls, daughters of Lal Mia and Manufa Akhter from Nilphamari's Jaldhaka upazila, were born in 2019, joined at the back and head. They share a spine, genitalia, and part of their intestinal tract.

Doctors partially separated their rectums nine days after birth, but follow-up surgery was postponed last year after the outbreak of Covid-19.

After a critical surgery at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Dhaka, Rabeya and Rokeya, who were born fused at the head, made a full recovery and returned to their home on 14 March this year.

Earlier in 2019, doctors at Dhaka Medical College Hospital and a hospital in Hungary did the surgery of conjoined twins Rabeya and Rokeya.

In 2010, doctors at Dhaka Shishu Hospital separated conjoined twins Moni and Mukta who had been conjoined at the lower part of their chests. 

Conjoined twins develop when an early embryo only partially separates, leaving babies physically connected after birth.