Doctors can't separate B.C.'s conjoined twins

Catherine Rolfsen, CanWest News Service; Vancouver Sun Published: Saturday, August 04, 2007 Canada.com

VANCOUVER -- A team of doctors refuse to separate ten-month-old conjoined twins Krista and Tatiana Hogan for fear an operation will kill or paralyze the girls. "There's no way (the doctor) would do it," said the girls' paternal grandmother, Gail Hogan, from her home in Vernon. "I believe it was an 80 per cent chance of neither making it, or if one did make it, they'd be paralyzed." Their mother, Felicia Simms, took the twins from Vernon to Vancouver for a meeting Friday with their medical team to receive the results of a contrasting dye test. Krista and Tatiana -- who are joined at the top of the skull and share some brain tissue -- were injected with different coloured dye to find out just how interconnected they are. "At first we thought it was just minor blood vessels, but it turns out to be more than that," said Hogan. "There's also electrical impulses in that bridge between the brain stems. I gather that's what's holding them back."

Hogan said doctors thought Tatiana would be most likely to survive an operation, since she has the majority of the blood vessels. "I guess they talked to several specialists, from the U.S. and such, and they all said no, not at this point," Hogan said. "Perhaps down the road, six months to a year, they'd test again, but that doesn't look likely ... I can't see anything changing." But Hogan said the meeting was hailed as good news by Simms and the baby's father, Brendan Hogan. "They both have the same thought. The babies are healthy now, that's all that matters at this point," Hogan said. "If they can't be separated there's nothing you can do about it. They're not going to put one at risk just to help the other unless they have to."