Because Islaam was literally sucking the life out of Manar, doctors were forced to perform a radical surgery they had never done. In fact, it had only been attempted once in history, and no child had ever survived it! A team of 14 doctors from Benha Children's Hospital outside of Cairo was assembled to perform the highly complicated surgery. The Benha Children's Hospital is a national government referral center that receives critically ill cases from all over Egypt. The team included Dr. Walid Sharshera, neurosurgeon; Prof. Mohamed Farouk, lead anesthesiologist; Dr. Nassif Hefnawi, lead plastic surgeon; Dr. Abla El Alfi, head of the intensive care team; and Prof. Mohamed Lottfy, lead neurosurgeon.
"It was very risky surgery," Dr. El Alfi says. "The mortality rate is 100 percent because nobody had survived it. We had a lot of meetings and we reviewed all the literature of what had happened in cases like this all over the world."
