Medicine: Joined Twins

For the second time in three years, Chicago doctors were faced with a problem rare in medical history: what to do about Siamese twins joined together at the top of their heads. Deborah Marie and Christine Mary were born (by Caesarean section) a fortnight ago to Norene Andrews, 35, a former nurse, wife of a meat salesman, and mother of a normal five-year-old girl. The twins, who weighed about 6 Ibs. each at birth, ate normally, and woke or slept independently of each other, were united in much the same way as the famed Brodie twins (TIME, Dec. 29, 1952, et seq.) with one obvious exception: the Brodie boys faced the same way, but the Andrews girls face in opposite directions, so that when one lies on her back, the other must lie on her abdomen.

X rays showed a second major difference between the Andrews and Brodie twins. There is a bony process between the girls’ brainpans, suggesting that they may have entirely distinct nervous systems and bloodstreams. If so, separating them should be far easier than with the Brodies, of whom only Rodney Dee survived. But doctors still could not be sure that the girls did not share a single sagittal sinus (a major vein returning blood from the top of the brain toward the heart). It was this defect that proved fatal to Roger Lee Brodie. Before surgery is attempted, the twins will be studied for months by the same medical team that operated on the Brodies.

There was news of two other sets of Siamese twins. After more than four hours on the operating table, Connie and Bonnie Johnson, 10½ weeks old, died in Little Rock, Ark. The attempt to separate them failed because their hearts were fused. In Paris, doctors were hopeful that Michéle and Nadége Aubrun would continue to make progress. Joined at the abdomen, they shared a liver and intestines. They were separated when two days old.