Sion woman gives birth to conjoined twins

A pair of rare conjoined twins with two heads and a single heart was born to a Sion couple at LTMG Sion hospital on Wednesday.

Doctors said that the mother approached the hospital when she was 32-week pregnant and the routine sonography revealed the condition. "Early diagnosis and precise characterisation is essential for proper obstetric and postnatal planning. In this case, there was a delay. The couple were counselled about the condition of the unborn babies. We admitted her earlier this week. The babies were prematurely born," said Dr YS Nandanwar, head of the gynaecology department in Sion hospital.

The babies were born by caesarean section at the hospital on Wednesday at 9.25 am with birth weight of 3.6 kg. The couple — who migrated to Mumbai 10 years ago and stays in Sion — has two daughters of age 4.5 years and 2.5 years. The father, Irshad Khan (28) works as a cobbler.

"This is a rare case of conjoined twins that occurs 1 in 5,00,000 cases. The babies are stable now," said Dr Paras Kothari, head of the paediatric surgery department.

"We will be doing the 2D echo tomorrow to ascertain the heart condition. This will tell us if he has any heart anomaly and help us plan the future course of action. Since the babies have only one heart, only one of them can be saved. The 2D echo report is very crucial," said Kothari.

He further said that once the 2D Echo report arrives, experts from various department including radiology, plastic surgery will be involved in the planning and permission from hospital's ethics committee.