Background
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust is the country's leading centre for treating sick children, with the widest range of specialists under one roof. With the UCL Institute of Child Health, we are the largest centre for paediatric research outside North America and play a key role in training children's health specialists for the future.
Great Ormond Street Hospital is the most experienced centre in Europe for the management of and, if necessary, the separation of conjoined twins. We have the two most experienced surgeons in the UK in this work leading a team of expert nurses, doctors, and other health professionals, providing the full range of expertise needed. The experience of the team in imaging, intensive care and the like is as important as surgical skill. Separation is best carried out at a tertiary centre with the full range of specialties on hand.
The Great Ormond Street Hospital team has dealt with 23 separations, 20 here (including the most recent twins) and three elsewhere. They have also dealt with nine inoperable cases, giving a total of 32.
The prospects for conjoined twins vary widely depending on their general state of health, how they are joined and what organs are shared. For planned separation where the children are stable and where separation can be undertaken at a suitable time, the survival rate for such operations carried out at Great Ormond Street Hospital is around 80 per cent. Under these circumstances both usually survive and have a good quality of life.
The Gaboras are the second pair of craniopagus twins to be successfully separated at Great Ormond Street.
Contact information:
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Email:
Coxs@gosh.nhs.uk
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