Prof. Adetokunbo Fabamwo, Chief Medical Director of LASUTH, confirmed this in an interview with PROPOLITICS on Monday in Lagos. The twins were delivered on Oct. 5 at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, LASUTH, at an estimated gestational age of 33 weeks and six days, according to the hospital’s administration.
Although the twins perished, their mother is doing fine, according to Fabamwo.
“The nature of their union was so complicated. They are connected from top to bottom, which is quite complicated. Furthermore, they must have reached a specific age before being separated.
“The first twins had congenital heart problems that made them unfit for life.” When you have irregularities like that, you frequently have additional abnormalities in your body.
“She had been The first died on October 15th.
“When it happened, we quickly moved to separate them by assembling a team of multispecialty experts from LASUTH and other hospitals.
“However, before we could intervene, the second twins died today (Oct. 16),”
Fabamwo noted that the successful delivery of the twins was celebrated by the hospital being the first of such at the facility.
PROPOLITICS recalled that the hospital on Oct. 5 announced the successful delivery of the conjoined twins, fused at the lower chest and abdomen (thoraco omphalopagus).
The hospital said that they were delivered by a multidisciplinary team.
It said that the conjoined female babies were delivered at 8:26 a.m. with good APGAR scores and a combined birth weight of 3.8kg.
Conjoined twins, popularly referred to as Siamese Twins, are two babies who are born physically connected to each other.
They develop when an early embryo only partially separates to form two individuals.
Although two babies develop from this embryo, they remain physically connected; most often at the chest, abdomen, or pelvis.
Conjoined twins may also share one or more internal body organs.
According to a 2017 report in the Journal of Clinical Anatomy, conjoined twins are extremely rare, with an incidence of 1 in 50,000 births, and about 70 per cent of them are female.
However, because around 60% of those instances are stillborn, the true incidence rate, according to the research, is closer to one in 200,000 births.
Conjoined twins who lived and were successfully separated have been reported in Nigeria.
Goodness and Mercy Martins were born on August 13, 2018, at the Federal Medical Centre in Keffi, Nassarawa State, and were separated in the hospital on November 14, 2019.
Hassanah and Hasina, born on January 12, 2022, at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital in Kaduna, were successfully separated on May 19, 2023, in Saudi Arabia.
