Delicate operation to separate twins gets underway

FIFTY surgeons at a Los Angeles hospital yesterday began to perform a rare operation which will take more than 10 hours to separate twin girls who are joined at the top of their heads.

The girls came to California after a charity raised money to pay for the procedure.

The skulls of the one-year-old girls, originally from Guatemala, are fused with their faces tilted in opposite directions.

Although they can hold hands, the girls have yet to see each other face to face.

The girls, Maria de Jesus and Maria Teresa Quiej, came to LA with their parents two months ago after a non-profit group, Healing the Children, raised the money for their treatment in California.

Doctors at UCLA Medical Centre have already performed surgery on the twins to stretch their skin, with doctors planting tiny expandable balloons under each baby’s scalp so there will be enough skin tissue to cover their heads once they are separated.

Although their brains function independently, lessening fears of their intellectual growth being stunted, some of their veins are joined.

Doctors need to preserve and re-route those veins or both twins risk suffering a fatal stroke.

The medical team has been rehearsing the operation using life-size models which not only replicate the babies blood vessels, but show their veins.

“It’s risky, but we feel pretty confident,” said craniofacial surgeon Henry Kawamoto.

The girls’ parents have also said they are hopeful their girls will do well in surgery.

“God willing, I have faith in God that everything will turn out well,” said their mother Alba Leticia Quiej-Alvarez.

Conjoined twins occur roughly once in every 200,000 live births. Mortality rates are often high even if there is the possibility of separation, but doctors say the girls stand a better chance of survival if surgery was performed.

The UCLA Medical Center physicians are donating their skills, but the bill for hospitalisation and use of equipment is still expected to top $1.5 million, hospital officials said.