The two one-year-old Cameroonian girls were bound at the abdomen. Their operation, which took place on Wednesday, went “successfully”.
It was a delicate operation and a surgical feat that took place on Wednesday November 13 at the pediatric surgery department of the Woman-Mother-Child-HCL hospital in Lyon: the separation of Siamese girls who were just one year old.
Born on November 6, 2018 in Cameroon, Bissie and Eyenga Merveille were until now connected by the abdomen, with a part of the liver in common. The five-hour operation, led by Professor Pierre Yves-Mure, deputy head of the pediatric surgery department at the Femme Mère-Enfant hospital, made it possible to separate them.
Operated “successfully”, the two little girls now twins are still in intensive care. Their condition is stable. “They will be able to discover the world individually”, rejoiced the Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL) in a statement.
The two little Siamese Cameroonians are now twins! The intervention, performed at#HFME from #HCLto separate them is a success ???? https://t.co/dCAdzNF8HR pic.twitter.com/jNKW3j7dXH
– HCL – Hospices Civils de Lyon (@CHUdeLyon) November 13, 2019
Rehabilitation and psychological follow-up
In total, about twenty people were mobilized to take care of the two little girls, taken care of individually after their separation. “We have set up a pool of anesthesiologists, surgeons and resuscitators and each specialty has assessed and assessed the very specific care of the little girls, explains Professor Mure in the press release. Each member of the team was able to adapt his practice to the atypical morphology of the two little ones”, he continues. “As a liver transplant specialist, I have operated on this organ and I have had no complications,” adds Dr. Rémi Dubois, the establishment’s practitioner.
If Bissie and Eyenga are now separated and out of the woods, their follow-up is not over. After their release from intensive care, they are then transferred to the pediatric surgery department of the Femme Mère Enfant hospital where they will begin their intensive care. Already supported, as well as their mother, by a psychologist, their psychological and psychomotor future will be closely monitored.
A press conference should be organized within ten days in the presence of the girls, depending on their state of health, as well as that of the medical team and the association La Chaîne de l’Espoir, which organized their repatriation from Cameroon.
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