Surgery to separate twins `going well`

The medical team attempting to separate conjoined three-year-old twins Trishna and
Krishna is happy with how the surgery is progressing.
The team at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital is undertaking one of the most
complex and dangerous operations in the world on the Bangladeshi girls.
The head of surgery at the hospital, Leo Donnan, said the chances of the twins
pulling through successfully were still only 25 per cent.
It may also be weeks before the girls are given the all-clear but the first couple
of days after the surgery is completed on Monday night will be crucial, he said.
"I think everything is going really very well at the moment," he told reporters.
"Separation is still some way off. It's a long process of dividing the girls' brains
so that they have their own tissue and their own identity.
"The girls' brain is going to be separated and then there is work that needs to be
done on the bony structures around the brain.
"Then the girls will be physically separated at that point."
Neurosurgeons and plastic surgeons will continue to work late into Monday night,
then there will be an anxious couple of days waiting to see how the girls recover,
he said.
He said the girls' vital signs have been stable so far.
"Lots of things can happen in the first couple of days after surgery. That's when
you get infections and there can be problems with the heart, lungs and all sorts of
things," Mr Donnan said.
"This is an unknown entity. We have not done this procedure before to this
complexity in this way, so we don't have a lot of historical evidence to look back
on.
"The all-clear depends on your definition but physiologically we hope to get that in
the next few days, but it's a long road."
The groundbreaking bid to save the girls comes two years after the orphans arrived
in Australia through Moira Kelly's Children First Foundation.