Surgeons successfully separate conjoined twins
Doctors in the US have successfully separated four-year-old twin sisters born fused at the midsection, with just one kidney and one set of legs, and were continuing with reconstruction surgery.
Doctors at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, said it was the first known surgical attempt to separate twins with a shared kidney.
The parents broke into tears when doctors announced that the separation had been completed last night, and, a few minutes after, one – Kendra Herrin – was moved to a separate operating room.
“It’s just a new beginning – and the end of a really good one,” father Jake Herrin said.
Reconstruction was expected to take another four-and-a- half hours hours.
Kendra and Maliyah Herrin were brought into the operating room at 7.15am local time yesterday. Doctors said the surgery to separate the sisters was completed at 10.50pm local time.
“It was very emotional,” Jake Herrin said. “They were more brave than us.”
The entire operation was expected to last 12 to 24 hours, during which surgeons planned to give each girl one leg and Kendra the kidney. Maliyah will be put on dialysis for three to six months until she is strong enough for a transplant of a kidney from her mother, Erin Herrin.
Surgeons also divided the girls’ single liver and separated their intestines.
The twins were stable through the first 12 hours of the operation, the doctors said earlier.
“Going great, no problems whatsoever,” said Dr. Rebecka Meyers, the hospital’s chief of paediatric surgery. She said the procedures surgeons performed on the twins are commonly done in many patients – just not those who are attached to each other.
“What’s unusual is doing them all in one single surgery, in two separate girls, followed by the physical separation of the children,” hospital spokeswoman Bonnie Midget said.
Surgeons had successfully separated the intestines, divided and reconstructed the twins’ two bladders and had begun work on some internal organ reconstruction, Meyers said. They planned next to begin reconstructing the shared pelvis, she said.
“We know going into this surgery that angels are watching over our children, we feel it,” Erin Herrin said.
The blue-eyed, sandy-haired girls were born locked in an embrace, practically face to face. Conjoined twins occur about once in every 50,000 to 100,000 births. Only about 20% survive to become viable candidates for separation.
Yesterday’s surgical team included six surgeons, two anesthesiologists, one radiologist, two urologists and 25 to 30 support staff members.
