A couple of conjoined sisters who were recently separated by surgeons just days after they were born are believed to be the youngest and smallest conjoined twins to have ever been successfully separated.
Together, the twins weighed an accumulative 4.75 pounds when they were separated by surgeons in Switzerland.
While the surgery, which took place just eight days after the twin sisters were born, only had a 1 percent chance of success, the surgeons involved managed to beat the odds and successfully separate the two girls.
When the girls, Lydia and Maya, were born last month in December, they were connected at the liver. Subsequently, the two children were quite ill as the amount of blood flowing through the liver from one sister to the next was “very great,” according to Geneva University Hospitals.
Geneva University Hospitals, known locally as Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève was quoted by The Independent as having said that at the time, one of the kids “had too much blood and blood pressure that was much too high, while the other child did not receive enough blood and had blood pressure that was too low”.
One child had too much blood and blood pressure that was much too high, while the other child did not receive enough blood and had blood pressure that was too low
The twins were not the only ones sharing their mother’s womb, as the BBC reports that they were born eight weeks premature along with their fully separate sibling — making them triplets. The separate child was reportedly born healthy. All three were delivered at the Inselspital hospital in Bern, Switzerland.
The team of 13 medical professionals who disconnected the twins spent a total of five hours working on the separation, which took place on December 10, 2015.
According to the hospital where the surgery took place, the kids are “still very small” but at this point, they’re not only recovering, but doing well as far as their development is concerned.
Not only have they put on weight since the surgery, they’ve started breastfeeding, the Le Matin Dimanche newspaper reported.
