Success at last- Conjoined twins separated

Washington DC, U.S.- Mateo and McHale Shaw’s fate favoured them, as the two conjoined twin boys were successfully separated in the Washington’s Children’s Hospital on Wednesday night.

The 14 and a half hour surgery was carried on by Robert Keating and his 65 member team comprising of doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. At the end of the surgery, he said that the four month old boys were now separate individuals and that both were doing well.

However, the two are kept under observation as they have a fair amount of defects; recovery can be judged only after a few days or weeks.

The shared tail bone was kept intact till the last stages of the operation as it provided stability and helped the surgeons in repositioning the boys.

Angie Benzschawel and Ryan Shaw of Sheboygan were blessed with the boys on May 10, who were joined from the lower back part. Earlier in the day, the spinal cord of the twins was separated, followed by muscles, tissue and gastrointestinal systems.

At the end of the surgery, both the parents were much elated and their happiness knew no bounds. Angie Benzschawel, the 25 year old mother reported that during the surgery, she and her husband were filled with various emotions.

The joining of the body of conjoined twins happens, when the zygote of identical twins fails to separate completely. Conjoined twins occur in an estimated one in 200,000 births, with approximately half being stillborn. The overall survival rate for conjoined twins is between 5% and 25%.

The earliest known case of conjoined twins dates back from 945, when a pair of conjoined twin brothers from Armenia were brought to Constantinople for medical evaluation. The English twin sisters Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst, who were conjoined at the back, lived from 1100 to 1134 and were perhaps the best-known early example of conjoined twins.