A British surgeon has told how he practiced for six months before undertaking surgery in Brazil to separate twins who were joined at the head.
In an exclusive interview with GB News, Dr Noor ul Owase Jeelani said: “It’s still early days. We did the final separation seven weeks ago and so far they’re making good progress.
“But we do need to wait for a few more months before we can prognosticate better. And you’re absolutely right, this surgery has to happen in an ideal world under the age of one because the children adapt and recover so much better when it’s done early.
“The issue with this particular set was Covid complicated matters for them, so whilst they were presented to their local hospital two and a half years ago, Brazil was under lockdown like the rest of the world and the local team couldn’t really access our support during Covid, hence the delays.”
Speaking in an interview during Breakfast with Isabel Webster and Mark Longhurst, Dr Jeelani added: “Our vision is to disseminate this knowledge but we’re not a beacon tower that needs to pull everything here [UK].
“That’s not the idea. It’s really dissemination of knowledge globally, that’s the primary aim. In certain circumstances, if the technical platforms aren’t there, if the infrastructure isn’t there, then yes, we’ll have to get these kids over here.
“Or the third option would be you know, if we’re thinking about, for example, south-east Asia, linking up with a centre closer to their home country, perhaps in Australia, and then supporting them deliver something like this. It’s very much a global health service that’s run from Gemini Untwined.”
He said: “It went on for a bit longer than expected. We were expecting the second stage, the final stage to last perhaps 12 to 16 hours, but it was a bit long as we had to work.
“We started Thursday morning at around half six and carried on through till Friday morning and I had to get on a flight A few hours later.”
Dr Jeelani said he practiced for the operation using virtual reality: “The simulations, the practice before surgery, for six months that was virtual reality.
“We’re not quite there yet – perhaps in another 10 years I’ll be coming back and telling you we actually did it in VR, but this time around it was the practice sessions or the various steps that we would need to undertake in the final surgery.
“We practised all of that in virtual reality, which was a huge advance.”
He said: “It’s the sixth set of twins that we’ve separated successfully. But with every set, the risks are still the same.
“This is very high risk surgery and although we understand it a bit more than we did 20 years ago, there is a lot we still don’t understand, and it’s a rather difficult position to be in to be the global expert to be called upon from various corners of the world and not to know the answers.
“So one of the key things that we’re trying to do here with Gemini Untwined, our charity, is to do further research and understand how best to help these kids because whilst we’re celebrating this particular set as we speak, there are other children, other families around the globe, that need this service that need our support.”
He added: “It doesn’t really matter where these kids are born, where these families are. We’re studying them trying to understand how best to help and then reaching out linking up with the local team and then improving the odds for these kids.
“We are by default, the global leaders in this kind of work at the moment. And that’s the backstory, how the NHS supports Great Ormond Street, how the research ecosystem within UCL and the wider healthcare sector in the UK in tech has helped deliver this result for children 11 hours away from us.”
