Together, apart.
Twin girls born conjoined at the abdomen are enjoying their new lives after being successfully separated during a four-hour surgery at a German hospital.
The Siamese twins, who have not been publicly named, were born by C-section in August 2023 before undergoing the separation surgery seven weeks later.
The procedure was performed by doctors at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, with the facility describing the operation as the first in its 135-year history.
“In this case, the children were medically ideal because they each had all of their vital organs,” Dr. Kurt Hecher, the hospital’s director of prenatal medicine, said in a statement obtained by Newsflash.
That fact made the girls a rarity, as approximately 75% of conjoined twins share organs with one another, according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The twins’ parents discovered that the little girls were connected at the abdomen in the 12th week of pregnancy.
Doctors decided to perform a C-section at 33 weeks — a procedure that also presented significant medical risks.
“It was a particular challenge because with a normal twin birth, only one child at a time has to fit through the opening of the uterus, as they are brought into the world one after the other,” Hecher explained. “In this case, there were two children at the same time.”
The little girls struggled in the weeks after their premature birth but were cared for by a team of savvy professionals.
“Our medical and nursing team quickly adapted to caring for the children in a ‘double pack,'” Dr. Dominique Singer, the hospital’s head of neonatology and pediatric intensive care, declared.
“Even when the two of them went through a somewhat more difficult phase before the operation, we always had the impression that they stabilized each other,” she added.
On Oct. 6 last year, the twins underwent the separation surgery, with doctors working to close each of their bellies.
The procedure was declared a success and the girls were able to go home with their parents at the end of that month.
More than three months on, the twins are now developing normally, with their ecstatic parents telling other moms and dads not to give up hope if their babies are born with any abnormalities.
“We are deeply grateful for the care, provision and separation of our girls,” they said in a statement.
“We would like to encourage other parents. So much is now possible in medicine.”
