https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-story-of-the-surgery-that-made-ben-carson-famous--and-its-complicated-aftermath/2015/11/13/15b5f900-88c1-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html


More than any other moment in a dazzling career,
the separation of the Binder twins launched the
stardom of Ben Carson. The then-35-year-old doctor
walked out of the operating room that day and
stepped into a spotlight that has never dimmed, from
the post-surgery news conference covered
worldwide, through his subsequent achievements in
his medical career, to publishing deals and a
lucrative career as a motivational speaker — all
paving the way to his current moment as a leading
candidate for the Republican presidential
nomination.

In January 1987, Theresia Binder was eight months
pregnant and suicidal. “I wanted to kill them and myself as well,” she said, according to Carson’s best-selling book “Gifted Hands.” She had just learned that her babies were stuck together and felt as if “a sick, ugly monster” was writhing inside of her.

“I saw the babies [and] noticed only a huge head
with two faces,” she told Bunte. “I thought: ‘My
God, what will they look like, how will they live?’ ”
She debated swallowing pills. She considered
opening up the window of a tall building and
jumping out. Instead, on Feb. 2, 1987, she gave birth
to her boys. They weighed a combined 8 pounds and
14 ounces. They shared a head, but Theresia’s fear
was replaced with a new emotion.

“After studying the available information, I
tentatively agreed to do the surgery knowing it
would be the riskiest and most demanding thing I
had ever done,” Carson wrote. “But I also knew it
would give the boys a chance — their only chance
— to live normally.”

The Binder twins were lucky in that they had two
brains. It meant that the surgery was at least feasible.
“From the time we started discussing it, we all tried
to keep in mind that we wouldn’t proceed with
surgery unless we believed we had a good chance of
separating the boys without damaging the
neurological function of either baby,” Carson wrote
in “Gifted Hands.”

On Labor Day 1987, the 7-month-old twins — who,
according to Newsweek had been “giggling and
kicking since entering Hopkins on September 2” —
went in for surgery. For four hours, heart surgeons
inserted “hair-thin” tubes into their veins and
connected them to heart-lung machines that would
keep them alive through surgery. Plastic surgeons
sliced into their scalp, removing the bone tissue that
connected them. The cardiologists then cut open
their chests and removed small amounts of tissue
from their heart to use later to construct new veins.

Doctors dropped the babies’ body temperature down
to 68 degrees, stopping their hearts and allowing
surgeons to operate without blood flow — the first
time anyone had tried such a strategy for this type of
surgery. A big clock on the wall counted down from
an hour: Every minute without a heartbeat beyond
the 60-minute mark threatened to cause irreparable
damage to the boys.

“When the hour is up, just turn the pumps back on,”
Carson told his team, according to his book. “If they
bleed to death then they’ll have bled to death, but
we’ll know we did the best we could.”

After Long gave him back his scalpel at the pivotal
moment, Carson severed the primary thin blue vein
that connected the twins. The doctors rapidly set
about creating new veins from the heart tissue they
had removed earlier. One twin was finished in 57
minutes, the other in 63.

“It got pretty intense in there,” said Bruce Reitz,
director of cardiac surgery, according to a
Washington Post article from the time. “We tried not
to look at the clock.”

Separated for the first time in their lives, Benjamin
and Patrick were placed in medically induced
comas. The magnitude of this precarious success was
lost on no one; a massive media scrum awaited the
doctors as they emerged from the operation.

“The success in this operation is not just in
separating the twins,” said Mark Rogers, the director
of the department of anesthesiology, at the news
conference. “Success is producing two normal
children.”

wonderful!

OP is a liar, read the article the twins never went on to live a normal life, plus that's not their picture up there and from the article, one of the twins is dead.

Impossicant!

Interesting..

Wow
He is worthy of celebration

Gifted hands indeed

hoodboy:
OP is a liar, read the article the twins never went on to live a normal life, plus that's not their picture up there and from the article, one of the twins is dead.

you're actually the liar or u don't have ur facts right

This is a misleading topic. One of the twins is dead, and the other twin isn't normal. Google is ur friend.....

Op, go and Google those twins, they are not the one up there, their parents are even blaming Dr Carson for separating them.

Only a super genius will separate these babies successfully..

And I don't think such human exists except for may be the old scientists like Einstein the great, and Isaac newton.

mikky234:

you're actually the liar or u don't have ur facts right

if you actually read the story from the source, you won't sound so ignorant

Freegift75:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-story-of-the-surgery-that-made-ben-carson-famous--and-its-complicated-aftermath/2015/11/13/15b5f900-88c1-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html


More than any other moment in a dazzling career,
the separation of the Binder twins launched the
stardom of Ben Carson. The then-35-year-old doctor
walked out of the operating room that day and
stepped into a spotlight that has never dimmed, from
the post-surgery news conference covered
worldwide, through his subsequent achievements in
his medical career, to publishing deals and a
lucrative career as a motivational speaker — all
paving the way to his current moment as a leading
candidate for the Republican presidential
nomination.

In January 1987, Theresia Binder was eight months
pregnant and suicidal. “I wanted to kill them and myself as well,” she said, according to Carson’s best-selling book “Gifted Hands.” She had just learned that her babies were stuck together and felt as if “a sick, ugly monster” was writhing inside of her.

“I saw the babies [and] noticed only a huge head
with two faces,” she told Bunte. “I thought: ‘My
God, what will they look like, how will they live?’ ”
She debated swallowing pills. She considered
opening up the window of a tall building and
jumping out. Instead, on Feb. 2, 1987, she gave birth
to her boys. They weighed a combined 8 pounds and
14 ounces. They shared a head, but Theresia’s fear
was replaced with a new emotion.

“After studying the available information, I
tentatively agreed to do the surgery knowing it
would be the riskiest and most demanding thing I
had ever done,” Carson wrote. “But I also knew it
would give the boys a chance — their only chance
— to live normally.”

The Binder twins were lucky in that they had two
brains. It meant that the surgery was at least feasible.
“From the time we started discussing it, we all tried
to keep in mind that we wouldn’t proceed with
surgery unless we believed we had a good chance of
separating the boys without damaging the
neurological function of either baby,” Carson wrote
in “Gifted Hands.”

On Labor Day 1987, the 7-month-old twins — who,
according to Newsweek had been “giggling and
kicking since entering Hopkins on September 2” —
went in for surgery. For four hours, heart surgeons
inserted “hair-thin” tubes into their veins and
connected them to heart-lung machines that would
keep them alive through surgery. Plastic surgeons
sliced into their scalp, removing the bone tissue that
connected them. The cardiologists then cut open
their chests and removed small amounts of tissue
from their heart to use later to construct new veins.

Doctors dropped the babies’ body temperature down
to 68 degrees, stopping their hearts and allowing
surgeons to operate without blood flow — the first
time anyone had tried such a strategy for this type of
surgery. A big clock on the wall counted down from
an hour: Every minute without a heartbeat beyond
the 60-minute mark threatened to cause irreparable
damage to the boys.

“When the hour is up, just turn the pumps back on,”
Carson told his team, according to his book. “If they
bleed to death then they’ll have bled to death, but
we’ll know we did the best we could.”

After Long gave him back his scalpel at the pivotal
moment, Carson severed the primary thin blue vein
that connected the twins. The doctors rapidly set
about creating new veins from the heart tissue they
had removed earlier. One twin was finished in 57
minutes, the other in 63.

“It got pretty intense in there,” said Bruce Reitz,
director of cardiac surgery, according to a
Washington Post article from the time. “We tried not
to look at the clock.”

Separated for the first time in their lives, Benjamin
and Patrick were placed in medically induced
comas. The magnitude of this precarious success was
lost on no one; a massive media scrum awaited the
doctors as they emerged from the operation.

“The success in this operation is not just in
separating the twins,” said Mark Rogers, the director
of the department of anesthesiology, at the news
conference. “Success is producing two normal
children.”

Patrick and Benjamin Binder (born
February 2, 1987) were conjoined
twins , joined at the head, born in
Germany in early 1987, and separated
at Johns Hopkins Hospital on
September 7, 1987.[1] They were the
first twins to be successfully
separated by neurosurgeon Ben
Carson , of Baltimore, Maryland. For
this operation Carson was able to
prepare by studying a three
dimensional physical model of the
twins' anatomy. Carson described
this separation as the first of its kind,
with 23 similar attempted separations
ending in the death of one or both
twins.
Although Carson was able to separate
the boys, they were both left
profoundly disabled. The Associated
Press reported, in 1989, two years
after the separation that Patrick
remained in a "vegetative state",
following the surgery. [2] He never
came out of his coma. According to a
2015 Washington Post article, he
"died sometime in the last decade." [3]
Benjamin recovered to a certain
extent.[2] The Washington Post
reported that Peter Parlagi, the twins'
younger half-brother, said the twins'
father was emotionally unable to ever
handle them, or share in their care. [3]
He said the twin's father became an
alcoholic, spent all the couple's
funds, and left their mother destitute
and alone. She was forced to
institutionalize them.
In a 1993 interview, their mother,
Theresia Binder, described guilt for
agreeing to the operation that ruined
the boys' prospect of ever having any
quality of life. [3] According to the
Washington Post's 2015 interview
with Parlagi, Benjamin never learned
to speak or feed himself, but he does
enjoy visitors, and being taken for
walks.
Op stop lying