Separated Twins Kept in Coma

Two-year-old Egyptian twins who had been born joined at the head were yesterday said to be in "good shape" and in a drug-induced coma after 27 hours of surgery in Dallas to separate them.

James Thomas, the director of critical care at the Dallas Children's Medical Centre, said it was too early to tell if the surgery had caused neurological damage to Ahmed and Mohamed Ibrahim's brains. They were described as being in "critical but stable" condition.

Doctors said the twins' father, Ibrahim, had fainted on hearing that they had been successfully separated.

Five neurosurgeons had particular difficulty separating the left hemisphere of Mohamed's brain from the right side of Ahmed's.

"It was very, very stuck together," said one of the neurosurgeons, John Vlasec. "We knew that the brains would be touching each other. But we thought, in most of the cases, they would peel apart relatively easily. But at this location, they did not."

However, Dr Thomas said that "it couldn't have been a better night" for the twins. He added that they would be kept on barbiturates to maintain a coma which would reduce stress on their brains while they were monitored for post-operative infection or brain swelling.

The marathon operation was conducted on a specially constructed operating table which allowed surgeons to rotate the twins through 360 degrees.