Ladan and Laleh Bijani

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Ladan and Laleh Bijani ( Persian لادن Lādan andلاله بیژنی Lale Bischani , DMG Lāle Bīžanī ; * January 17, 1974 in Firuzabad , Iran ; † July 8, 2003 in Singapore ) were an Iranian Siamese pair of twins that had grown together at the head. They died a short time after the operation that was supposed to separate them.

biography

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At the time of their birth, Ladan's and Laleh's parents lived in the Iranian town of Lohrasb, which has around 300 inhabitants and had no running water or electricity.

Although the mother had a medical check- up before the birth, the malformation of the twins was not diagnosed until the birth in the hospital in Firuzabad. From there they were immediately transported to the Namazi Hospital in Shiraz , then a renowned clinic under American management. For years the children lived there separated from their parents, whom they could only visit occasionally, until in 1977 they were transferred to the Reza Pahlavi Hospital in Tehran , Iran's most modern clinic, without their parents' knowledge .

Here the bazaar trader Alireza Safaian met the sisters and took care of them. In the metropolis of Karaj near Tehran , the two grew up in a residential area.

In the summer of 1977, the three-year-olds were presented to a German clinic for the first time to examine the possibility of an operation. The foster father's brother was a surgeon in Erlangen and thus established contact with the Bonn University Hospital . But the doctors there rejected the procedure as too dangerous.

On the advice of psychologists, the two girls were sent to a normal school - they were very good and popular in class. The public also became aware of the girls and so the father found out from the media where his children were. He tried to get custody, but a court refused to return to his parents in the province.

They both wanted to study, but Ladan wanted to become a lawyer and Laleh a journalist . You ended up studying law at Tehran University for six years .

The different life desires and characters of the two - Ladan talked a lot and enjoyed doing something, Laleh was often thoughtful and sometimes even depressed - made it more and more difficult for them to live together, they wanted to be separated.

Operation 2003

The two visited many clinics, including in Hanover in 1988 and in Heidelberg in 1997 , but no clinic was able to perform the operation.

The main problem was that Ladan and Laleh had only one main vein running at the back of their heads for their two separate brains , but in the event of a separation each of the women would need its own. This vein was an insurmountable hurdle for the doctors.

In 2002 the two learned of a successful breakup in Singapore with a couple with their heads grown together , but they were babies. They were examined at Raffles Clinic in Singapore and neurosurgeon Keith Goh and his medical team were finally ready to operate on both of them. The chances of survival were then estimated at 50%.

Separations of Siamese twins in adulthood are considered very risky. The team had prepared for the operation with the help of a virtual “ brain bench ”. This " Brain Bench ", a faithful three-dimensional model of the sisters' brains , on which the medical professionals could practice all steps, was developed by the National University of Singapore in cooperation with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore .

The operation began on Sunday, July 6th, 2003 and was performed by 28 doctors. The removal of the bone ligament between the skulls of the two twins took more than six hours.

The common vein that ran at the back of the head of the Bijani twins was to receive Laleh after the brains were separated. Ladan was supposed to get a bypass with the help of a vein from her thigh , through which the blood should drain from her brain. The bypass, which had taken 13 hours to build, turned out to be insufficiently permeable on Monday evening.

During the operation, the nurses' blood pressure fluctuated threateningly and there was a risk of brain swelling . Discontinuing the operation was considered.

Ultimately, the twins lost so much blood that their condition could no longer be stabilized. 53 hours after the operation began, Ladan Bijani died, and her sister Laleh died an hour and a half later. The official cause of death was circulatory failure due to blood loss.

media

  • Dying To Be Apart. Andy Stevenson (Reg.), ITN Factual (Prod.), Channel 4 Television Corporation (Distr.), UK 2003 ( IMDb ); dt. To die for one's own life - The dream of Ladan and Laleh Bijani. ( lifepr.de ( memento from April 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ))

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