The surgery began Tuesday afternoon, at the Mattel Children's Hospital at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Separation surgeries for conjoined conjoined twins have been performed only five times in the last decade, and not all twins survived.
An operation to separate conjoined twins from Guatemala has been crowned a success
The twins, before the operation. The frequency of the case - one in a million
In a dangerous operation that lasted about 20 hours, one-year-old twins from Guatemala, who were born joined at the head, were separated yesterday. Dr. Homan Hamati, who participated in the surgery, said that the separation of the twins Maria Teresa and Maria de Jesús Cuveh-Alvarez was, apparently, successful. Last night it was learned that one of the twins was rushed to the operating room for treatment.
"We all had goosebumps at the end of the surgery," Matti told the NBC television network. "Those present cheered, clapped, cried. It wasn't just optimism, it was tremendous joy."
The surgery began Tuesday afternoon, at the Mattel Children's Hospital at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Separation surgeries for conjoined conjoined twins have been performed only five times in the last decade, and not all twins survived.
The girls were born in Guatemala joined at the ends of the skull, with their heads facing opposite directions. Although two bones and blood vessels are in common, each has a separate brain. The incidence of such cases is less than one case per million births.
The dangerous part of the operation was the separation of the blood vessels connecting the heads of the two girls. "No one knew what we would find when we opened the babies' heads. We did a lot of scans. Fortunately, everything was as we expected. The two brains were not connected, so it was much easier for us to separate the two twins," said the Matti.
6/8/2002
Los Angeles Siamese twins from Guatemala underwent separation surgery at the University of California Children's Hospital yesterday. More than 50 staff members will participate in the operation and it is expected to last between 12 and 24 hours.
The one-year-old sisters are joined at the top of the skull - a connection that occurs once in a million births. The two share blood vessels and bones, but their brains are not connected. The sisters have never seen each other's faces, because of the way the skulls are connected. The operation may become complicated when the doctors separate the veins in the nurses' heads.
