Elizabeth O.
Dr. Isaac Lazar told The Times of Israel of the remarkable moment on Sunday when the girls looked at each other for the first time, after a year connected at their heads but unable to see one another, and of the “unbelievable joy” that the parents felt.
“When the nurses brought the babies together, newly separated, they looked at each other, made noises, and gently touched each other — it was beautiful,” Lazar said. “You could see the communication between them, and it was just so special.”
Every member of the huge medical team, which had been planning the operation since before the babies were born last August, was aware that a single slip could have disastrous consequences.
“Any wrong decision could have been the difference between life and death,” said Lazar, director of the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at Soroka University Medical Centre in Beersheba.
“It was so delicate, as the surgery was performed between major blood vessels in the babies’ heads. We all knew that any bleed could have catastrophic consequences.”
But the sophisticated Israeli technology that created 3D models for doctors to practice on, and hundreds of hours of preparation, helped everything go smoothly.
AFP
