Surgeon who tried to separate Laleh and Ladan tells of heartbreak

Eighteen months after carrying out an operation to separate Siamese twins from Iran, a Singaporean neurosurgeon has spoken of his continuing sadness at the failure of the surgery.

'I feel sad. I feel very sad that the patients did not survive. But when I look back and ask myself if we could have done things differently, I don't think we could have,' said Keith Goh Yu-ching, associate professor of neurosurgery at Chinese University.

Dr Goh recalled the dilemma he faced before carrying out the operation, as he spoke to the Sunday Morning Post ahead of the premiere of the documentary Dying to be Apart on the Discovery Channel tonight. The documentary details the extraordinary story behind 29-year-old Laleh and Ladan Bijani's decision to opt for surgery - risking death for the dream of leading separate lives.

Dr Goh led a team of 28 doctors trying to separate the sisters, but they died of blood loss during the operation in July 2003.

'I was terrified because I knew the chance of a poor outcome. The risk was very high ... I knew I was putting my reputation at risk.'

But it was professionalism that prevented him from 'running away' from the job.

'Rather than abandoning the patients, when we realised they would have surgery whatever the outcome, we tried to do our best to create the best environment to pull them through,' he said.