Dominican Republic baby dies after surgery to remove second head

by Humberto Brito

Sunday, February 8, 2004

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AFP): Two-month-old Rebeca Martinez died in a Dominican Republic hospital on Saturday, hours after an operation to remove a second head attached to her own.

Rebeca's case had sparked an international wave of sympathy, and an international charity had paid for the 10-hour operation carried out Friday by 18 doctors and nurses in the capital of the Caribbean nation.

"God must have wanted it this way. He must have his reasons," the girl's mother, Maria Gisela Martinez, said as she announced that the baby had lost her struggle for life.

Surgeons had initially been optimistic after the operation, which was believed to be the first of its kind, but complications started around dawn Saturday and the baby died after suffering massive hemorrhaging.

"We knew it was very serious and very risky surgery. But we had to try," the mother added, with her husband, Franklin, at her side. "We did it knowing the kind of risk we were running."

Rebeca was born with a second head on top of her cranium on December 10 in Santo Domingo. Doctors said the head came from a conjoined twin which had not fully developed. But the second head was a critical threat to Rebeca's brain.

Despite their sadness, the parents insisted on speaking publicly to thank the team of doctors -- led by Jorge Lazareff, head of pediatric neurosurgery at the University of California at Los Angeles's Children's Hospital -- and Cure International, which paid for the operation.

"We know they did everything humanly and scientifically possible," the mother said. "The most important thing for us is that the doctors never left her side. They were always right there with her."

"Apparently there was an imbalance in her arterial pressure after the surgery and that caused the hemorrhaging" that cost the baby her life, Lazareff told a press conference at the Santo Domingo Centre for Orthopaedic Specialities.

"The surgery technically had gone well," he added. "But when the hemorrhaging happened, we did everything that we could to try to get the baby to respond, but we were not able. We were not able to keep her alive."

Lazareff said the whole medical team had been boosted by the knowledge that the family was behind them in the risky operation. The bloodflow to the second head had come from Rebeca, and the veins and arteries had to be clipped during the operation.

Lazareff is the same expert who in August 2002 separated Guatemalan conjoined twins Maria Teresa and Maria Jesus Quiej Alvarez.

The Guatemalan girls were born conjoined at the crown of the head and were separated on August 6, 2002 after a complicated operation by a team of 50 neurosurgeons and plastic surgeons.

Twins connected at the head are the rarest of conjoined twins, and those who survive to adulthood are rarer still.

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