Twins under intensive care as doctors mull surgery
PHOTO | RACHEL KIBUI The conjoined twins.
What you need to know:
- Babies feeding on their mother’s breast milk and have put on weight
The conjoined twins from Nakuru are still in intensive care at Kenyatta National Hospital’s where doctors are stabilising them.
The twins, with two heads and one body, are feeding on their mother’s expressed breast milk. They are in an incubator and cannot be removed to suckle.
Hospital spokesman Simon Ithae said doctors were still carrying out tests to determine whether they would be surgically separated.
“The twins’ weight has increased marginally from 3.82kg when they were admitted to 3.9kg,” Mr Ithae said on Thursday.
Next course of action
“However, the twins are suffering from jaundice (a condition of yellow eyes that usually occurs on newborn infants due to elevated blood levels) and appear distressed.
“The doctors want them to stabilise first before deciding the next course of action,” he added.
Specialists, among them neuro-surgeons, cardiologists, paediatricians, haematologists and radiologists, are involved in the tests on the twins.
Mr Ithae said the team was expected to give a comprehensive report today. They are also expected to announce whether they will be surgically separated.
The twins were delivered at Rift Valley Provincial General Hospital in Nakuru.
Nurse Eunice Muthee said this was the first such birth there.
But this is not the first time that conjoined twins have been born in Kenya.
In 2004, two conjoined boys were born at a Mombasa hospital but died a few days later.
