Brazilian twins who were joined at the head have been successfully separated with the help of a British neurosurgeon.
Bernardo and Arthur Lima, who were born with fused brains, underwent several operations in Rio de Janeiro, with the direction of Great Ormond Street Hospita l paediatric surgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani. The three-year-olds had seven surgical procedures involving more than 27 hours of operating time in the final operation alone, and almost 100 medical staff.
It was one of the most complex separation processes ever completed, according to the charity which funded it and which Mr Jeelani founded in 2018, Gemini Untwined. Surgeons in London and Rio spent months trialling techniques using virtual reality projections of the twins based on CT and MRI scans, something Jeelani described as “space-age stuff.”
