Yesterday, doctors were successful in their attempt to separate 5-month old twins who were conjoined at the chest. The procedure took six hours and the physicians at the Mayo Clinic stated that the procedures went exceptionally well.
The twins were conjoined at the chest and had been in the hospital for 99 days, but yesterday marked their first day as separate individuals. There were 40 people on the medical team involved in the surgery that separated the two young girls.
The twins began their stay at the Mayo Clinic when doctors implanted tissue expanders. The expanders were designed to slowly stretch the skin so that after they were separated the incisions could be closed after the separation procedure was performed.
Tension in the Surgery
According to the news reports, the girls had to have their hearts placed back into their chests. One twin’s heart projected into the other’s chest. The most difficult part required reconstructing their chests and dealing with the fact that the girls shared one liver that needed to be separated. Fortunately, they each possessed their own drainage system.
The twins will require several weeks of intensive care to allow them time to heal from the trauma of the surgery and to grow stronger and healthier. At this time, there do not seem to be any problems expected in their recovery – but it’s still just the first day. This is the fifth surgery to separate conjoined twins that the Mayo Clinic has performed.
1 in 250,000
Conjoined twins develop in about 1 out of every 50,000 pregnancies. But the number resulting in live births are limited to only about 1 in 250,000. Twins are fascinating to us and conjoined twins are even more so – often treated as freaks over previous generations, modern medical procedures offer the conjoined twins opportunities to live as individuals and in some cases, to live at all – congratulations to the Mayo Clinic and to the parents of baby Abiygail and baby Maydsen – congratulations on their first day as individuals.
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