Bengaluru: Patent Duct Arteriosus (PDA) Stenting is a process where a stent is placed in the PDA and the blood flow from the heart is maintained. Doctors at Narayana Health City have performed this surgery on four-month-old conjoined twins who shared the same heart.

Parents of baby Papillon had come to Bengaluru to seek help from experts in order to separate their conjoined twins who shared a heart.

The twins had been joined from the neck to the upper abdomen and were in desperate need of surgery as their shared heart couldn’t sustain them both. Doctors at Narayana Health City conducted the world’s first PDA stenting on the conjoined twins as open heart surgery was not a choice.

Doctors said that the twins shared one heart that was fused and had seven chambers, instead of two hearts with four chambers each. Following this surgery, doctors advised separation surgery as one of them suffered from non-correctable congenital anomalies.

Parents were told that the unhealthy child would only pose a threat to the healthy one and they decided to support the healthy child. Tissues of the other baby were used to reconstruct the torso of the surviving twin. Baby Papillon is the ‘3rd Miracle Baby’ in the world to have survived a Thoracopagus separation surgery.

Father of the twins, Ian Papillon, expressed his gratitude and said, “Today we have at least one of our daughters with us, only because of the doctors at Narayana Health City. While I’m taking back only one daughter, she mirrors her sister as well.”

Baby Papillon has responded to treatment well and is now in a position to return to her homeland.