Make it Make Sense! Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome

(This is an unpublished piece)

I was a labour and delivery nurse for almost 20 years. I always enjoyed coming up with ways to teach students/new nurses and patients in words that made very medical things make sense to them. A favourite example of this was explaining twin to twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS). TTTS occurs in 10-15% of monochorionic diamniotic twins. This means that there is one placenta (chorion) and two amniotic sacs. One baby grows faster because of this discrepancy. The other baby's growth is very much restricted as a result. I used to explain it by asking if they would give only one bowl of food to 2 dogs. The more dominant dog would likely eat the majority of the food while the less dominant dog would get what was left. There are procedures to try and fix this issue, but for the most part twins with TTTS are born quite prematurely. Once they are born, most people are surprised to find out that the smaller baby tends to do better than it's bigger sibling. It's like it now has it's own bowl of food and doesn't have to fight for it anymore. I hope this helps you to understand this a bit better too and perhaps you can even start using this anecdote in practice!

Jennifer Hoar, RN

Stock photo from Vecteezy