Doctors at National Institute of Child Health (NICH) are struggling hard to ensure survival of conjoint twins (parapagus) born to a couple residing in Quaidabad, inhabited by factory workers. Executive Director, NICH, Professor Jamal Reza told APP, on Wednesday, that the twins delivered at a private maternity home on Saturday are first of the babies born to their parents.
They are joined at their chest having a single heart, single liver and have only one set of external genitalia which is female. They have two lower limbs, three upper limbs, one pair of lungs, and one common intestine with one stomach. These conjoined twins are among one in 50,000 pregnancies, and one in 650-900 twin pregnancies.
According to doctors conjoined twinning is a random event, unrelated to heredity, maternal age or parity. The incidence of live born conjoined twins is a one set per 200,000 live births, said the senior child specialist. These conjoint twins, presently placed at the surgical ICU are under the care of Professor Surgeon Jamshed Akhtar who was not much satisfied with the physical condition of the babies.
"There is no immediate plan of any surgical intervention and only a decision can be made at a later stage when their condition stabilises," said Professor Jamal Reza. According to Surgeon Jamshed babies are presently suffering from infection and excessive load due to sharing of their vital organs. They are being treated for their infections and will be followed according to the problem.
Reminding that conjoint twinning is not common, Professor Jamal Reza said two theories have been proposed to explain conjoined twinning. Classically, the theory asserts that incomplete fission of a single embryonic disc occurs 13 to 15 days after the ovum is fertilised (fission theory).
More recently, embryologic studies of conjoined twinning have indicated an alternative postulation that this developmental anomaly could originate from the secondary fusion of two separate monovular embryonic discs (fusion theory). Conjoined twins are mainly classified according to incomplete duplication (parasitic) or complete duplication.