 |
| Abbigail and Isabelle were born
joined at the chest and abdomen. But Friday's surgery separated
them for ever.(file
photo) |
BEIJING, May 14
(Xinhuanet) -- The surgery to separate conjoined twins in the U.S.
was successful, but the girls have a tough recovery ahead, the
Mayo Clinic surgeons, who performed the surgery, said in a statement.
The surgery was performed on Friday. A medical team
of about 30 people took part in the operation. On Saturday, the
girls remained in intensive care under sedation, breathing with the
assistance of ventilators.
Doctors said that the surgery was complicated but that
there was a 90 to 95% chance that both girls would survive.
The five-month-old twins were born joined at the chest and
abdomen. The nearly seven hours long surgery untangled their livers,
repositioning their hearts and dividing a shared intestine.
Abbigail and Isabelle Carlsen, borned to a couple
from Fargo, North Dakota, spent their first five months looking eye to eye,
often bumping legs and arms and touching each other in the face.
After Friday's surgery they are now sleeping in separate beds.
"We've had our prayers answered up to now," the girls'
parents, Amy and Jesse Carlsen, wrote in a message posted Saturday on the
family's Web journal. "And we will continue to pray for a perfect recovery."
Conjoined twins occur once in every 70,000 to 100,000 live
births, according to the John Hopkins Children Centre. Since the mid-1990s,
there have been about 250 surgical separations in which one or both twins
survived, according to the American Pediatric Surgical Association.Enditem
(Agencies)
