LA surgeons separate conjoined twins

After a daylong marathon separation surgery at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Surgeons succeeded in separating Ten-month-old conjoined twin sisters, on Wednesday, a hospital spokesman said. However further operation is expected to be finished early Thursday.

The last pelvic bone connecting the twins was cut at 6:20 p.m. after a long and complex surgery at the Los Angeles Hospital.
The conjoined twin girls, Regina and Renata Salinas Fierros, were attached from the lower chest to the pelvis, born facing each other in what the other doctor described as a "permanent hug."

According to director of surgery Doctor Henri Ford, the twin sisters, Regina and Renata were connected from the breast bone down to the pelvis and everything in between -- this includes their intestine, bladders, genital organs, liver and bony pelvis. He said earlier in the day that the sisters "looked very healthy and quite good" throughout the operation.

However, Ford says, everything has gone very well, but doctors remain alert for any indication of trouble. Although the surgery is delicate, the good news is that each baby has its own vital organs, meaning that sustaining life for both girls is very possible. The identical twins were fused at the front, but had separate heads, necks, shoulders, hearts, lungs, arms and legs. Of the twins, Regina was born with one kidney.

The twins were born Aug. 2, 2005, at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center while their Mexican parents were in the United States on an extended tourist visa. The twins were later locomoted to Childrens Hospital, where doctors spent months preparing for the separation surgery. Their mother, Sonia Fierros, 23 told the media, "We feel nervous and anxious," "but at the same time very tranquil."

After the surgery there was an "orderly calm" in the operating room as doctors moved one of the twins to another room, said spokesman Steve Rutledge. He informed further, "They (twins) seem to be doing fine."

Doctors planned to work through the night reconstructing the chest walls and pelvis regions and sewing up surgical wounds of both the girls. The girls remained calmed.

Merely a few hundred pairs of conjoined twins are born each year globally. In the United States, such pairs occur 1 in every 200,000 live births and about 10 % of the cases are similar to Regina and Renata.

Various physicians from the 80-member team working on the twins formerly had participated in another conjoined twin separation surgery at the hospital in 2003, but this surgery was more complex because more organ systems were involved.

However, Childrens Hospital refused to unveil the operation's cost, which will be covered by a state health program. The hospital has operated on five conjoined twins since 1966 including three cases in which both twins survived.