Want China Times, CNA and Staff Reporter 2015-03-15
Doctors in Taiwan's eastern county of Hualien on Friday successfully separated a pair of conjoined twin sisters from the Philippines who shared a liver.
Doctors work to separate the twins at the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital in Hualien, March 13. (Photo courtesy of the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital) |
Doctors in Taiwan's eastern county of Hualien on Friday successfully separated a pair of conjoined twin sisters from the Philippines who shared a liver.
Ludy De
Gusman, mother of the 15-month-old twins, burst into tears of relief and
gratitude when the operation finished after almost eight hours at the Buddhist
Tzu Chi General Hospital's branch in the county.
Gusman said
she was very grateful to the medical team for helping to give the sisters
normal lives.
Prior to
the surgery, Gusman said, she had shut herself and her daughters off from the
outside world and remained confined to their home for a year so that the people
in her village would not laugh at them.
Lee
Ming-che, head of the hospital's department of surgery, commented on the length
of the operation, saying that he and his team took extra care to reduce the
amount of blood loss, as previous experience has shown them that surgery
involving the liver causes the most severe blood loss.
The
twins–Jennelyn Mendoza De Guzman and Jerrelyn Mendoza De Guzman–were taken to
Taiwan for the surgery after Kao Jui-ho, head of the Hualien hospital, met them
during a free clinic in the Philippines' Bautista municipality last November.
Volunteers
of the Hualien-based Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-Chi Foundation in the
Philippines helped to raise funds for the operation and the twins arrived in
Taiwan Jan. 9 for preliminary care, which included tissue expansion for skin
grafts and liver reconstruction.
Chen
Pei-jung, the deputy head of the hospital, who organized the team that carried
out the surgery, said the procedure was easier than previous operations on
conjoined twins as the liver was the only organ shared by the sisters.
The
operation is the third the Hualien hospital has conducted on conjoined twins.
The first
took place in 2003 and the second in 2010.
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