In an outstanding achievement, doctors in Brazil were successfully able to separate conjoined twins with the help of virtual reality. Following instructions from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, the three-year-olds Bernardo and Arthur Lima underwent operations in Rio de Janeiro. The teams tested several methods for days utilizing virtual reality twin projections that were based on CT and MRI images.
The twins had an extremely rare condition known as craniopagus twins in which the siblings were fused at the cranium. The brothers were joined at the top of the head for almost four years and had to spend the majority of that time in a hospital in Rio de Janeiro equipped with a special bed.
Following a series of nine operations culminating in a marathon 23-hour surgery to separate them, the brothers are now free and able to look each other in the face for the first time.
27-hours long surgery successful in separating Twins
Gemini Untwined, a London-based medical charity, assisted with the treatment. Virtual reality was used to assist the medical team’s approximately 100 staff members to get ready for the crucial final phases of the procedure on June 7 and June 9. In a trans-Atlantic virtual reality trial surgery, surgeons simulated the technique using brain scans to generate a digital map of the boys’ common cranium.
Noor ul Owase Jeelani, the lead surgeon for Gemini Untwined, named the preparations “space-age stuff”. He said, “It’s just wonderful. It’s really great to see the anatomy and do the surgery before you actually put the children at any risk. You can imagine how reassuring that is for the surgeons… To do it in virtual reality was just really man-on-Mars stuff.”
Dr. Jeelani is an experienced surgeon, having separated twins from Sudan, Israel, Turkey, and Pakistan. This marked his 6th separation surgery. He oversaw the treatment with Dr. Gabriel Mufarrej, director of pediatric surgery at Brazil’s Instituto Estadual do Cerebro Paulo Niemeyer. The twins will receive help for six months of rehabilitation while they are in the hospital and are making good progress.
