Conjoined Twins Successfully Separated

Regina and Renata Salinas Fierros were born as one in August 2nd, 2005 joined from the lower chest to the pelvic region. They were facing each other, connected in a few places, like liver and the genitals and had the same large bowels.

Two days ago, a team of 80 surgeons participated in a long and hard surgery of separating the twins at the Childrens Hospital in LA. The surgery lasted less than 24 hours and went pretty well. It was actually finished early than expected, cutting the risk of infections that way.
The surgery started by cutting the breastbone and continues on to organ separation. It took 12 hours to finish cutting the last pelvic bone and turn to the girls’ organs.

The girls were conjoined at the front but they had separate heads, necks, shoulders, hearts, lungs, arms and legs. As one of the girl’s legs were facing backward, doctors made sure they corrected it, so she could walk normally.

After the surgery was finished, the two girls were placed next to each other but in separate beds. The following 48 hours are the most critical but the doctors’ hopes are high especially because they finished the surgery sooner than expected.

Only a few hundred pairs of conjoined twins are born each year worldwide. In the States only, they occur 1 in every 200,000 live births.