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| |  Conjoined Twins Celebrate Five Years Of Separation HOUSTON -- June 11, 1997 -- Not many six-year-olds are excited about blowing out five candles on a cake. But Tiesha and Iesha Turner aren't your average six-year-olds. A precocious pair, the young girls aren't celebrating their birth -- they're celebrating their lives. Born on April 19, 1991, Tiesha and Iesha were conjoined twins, joined at the chest and the abdomen. They were successfully separated by surgeons at Texas Children's Hospital on June 9, 1992. On June 9, 1997, the girls reunited with their doctors to celebrate five years of separation. The twins, who reside in Beaumont, Texas with their mother Jackie and their two-year-old brother John, have made several trips back to Texas Children's to visit their cardiologist, Dr. Michael Nihill, and to receive yearly post-separation surgery check-ups. During yesterday's visit, the two girls were greeted with a big cake and gifts by their team of doctors who spent so much time with the tiny twins in surgery five years ago. "We are excited to reunite with our team of doctors," said Lark Turner, the twins' maternal grandmother. "The twins have been through a lot in the last five years and gone through a lot of changes. They've grown up and developed a love for life, the outdoors and -- ice cream." Today, the very active duo love doing anything outside. Now that they've gotten a year of kindergarten under their belts, they are looking forward to a summer outdoors. The twins love to swim, play at the park, ride their bikes and rollerblade. The two will start first grade at an elementary school in Beaumont in the fall. "Although the girls will still need more surgery to improve their chest contour, we all have a lot to applaud," said Dr. Samuel Stal, chief of the plastic surgery service at Texas Children's Hospital and associate professor with the division of plastic surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. "We have spent a good deal of time with these two over the past five years, and we are thankful to celebrate their five-year post-separation surgery date together." After being delivered by cesarean section and weighing a combined 9.5 pounds, the Turner twins were admitted to Texas Children's Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. A full evaluation after their birth revealed that the twins had two separate digestive systems and kidneys but that their livers were fused. Prenatal and postnatal echocardiograms found that the twins had two separate cardiac structures. After Iesha received a relatively simple cardiac procedure, the twins were doing well and were discharged from the hospital on May 13, 1991. Dr. Nihill, pediatric cardiologist at Texas Children's and professor with the department of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, followed the twins' development over the next nine months. "When the twins were almost 10 months old, we performed an MRI and realized that there was a possibility to successfully separate the girls' chests and livers after they passed the one-year mark," said Dr. Nihill. "The surgeons were concerned that there would not be enough skin to cover the surgery area, so Dr. Stal recommended that tissue expanders be implanted to allow progressive expansion of the chest and abdominal skin." The tissue expander procedure involved implanting three small silicone balloons beneath the skin near the area of the planned separation incisions. Following implantation, the balloons were routinely injected with saline solution until the skin had expanded enough to cover the desired area. This was the first time that this type of tissue expander implant procedure had been performed in conjoined twins. "The use of tissue expanders to stretch the pre-existing skin allowed for complete protective coverage of the wound which would not have otherwise been possible," added Dr. Stal. "In addition, we were able to selectively stretch their chest wall skin so normal breast development can occur." On June 9, 1992, a team of surgeons at Texas Children's Hospital separated the twins. The separation team consisted of the late pediatric surgeon, Dr. William Pokorny; cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. David Ott; plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Samuel Stal; plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Jeffrey Friedman; pediatric anesthesiologist, Dr. Nancy Glass; cardiovascular anesthesiologist, Dr. John Cooper; and the twin's pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Michael Nihill. Within a week after the separation surgery, both Tiesha and Iesha experienced post-operative complications. The twins each underwent bowel-obstruction procedures over the next month and remained in serious condition. By the end of July, Iesha was upgraded from serious to good condition, and she was discharged from the hospital on August 13. Tiesha continued to have multiple setbacks, including pneumonia and a chronic intestinal obstruction, and remained in the hospital until October 15. Yesterday, five years after their separation, the twins celebrated with their doctors and a healthy-sized cake. Although the twins are celebrating a milestone, there is still some reconstructive surgery planned for the near future. "Bony remodeling of the sternum and ribs will give these beautiful children a normal chest contour and appearance," said Dr. Stal. Texas Children's Hospital has seen eleven pairs of conjoined twins since 1964. Of the 11, three pairs of twins have been successfully separated. Texas Children's Hospital is a 456-licensed bed, full-care pediatric facility. The largest pediatric hospital in the nation, Texas Children's Hospital has a medical staff consisting of more than 1,250 physicians and dentists and approximately 49 fellows, who are licensed physicians studying pediatric subspecialties. They are joined by a highly skilled nursing and support staff of more than 3,000 members. Texas Children's Hospital is dedicated to providing the finest possible pediatric patient care, education and research.
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