Conjoined twins separated in China

Doctors in Shanghai have successfully separated 10-month-old conjoined twin girls, though their condition remained precarious due to heart and other problems, a Chinese hospital official said today.

The girls, Hu Jingxuan and Chen Jingni, shared a liver, spleen, gall bladder and digestive tract before the surgery, which lasted 13 hours, said an official in the administrative office of Fudan University Children’s Hospital, where the surgery took place.

“Generally speaking, this was a very successful operation, much better than we expected,” the official said.

“Now the two children are in a comparatively stable condition. But they still face a lot of serious problems, such as possible organ failure and malnutrition.”

“Now they are under observation. They both still need several more operations,” she said.

Hospital administrators branded the surgery a miracle.

“Theirs was the first separation surgery of its kind in the world,” the state-run newspaper Shanghai Daily cited Gui Yonghao, president of Fudan University Children’s Hospital, as saying.

“It would have been a miracle for one child to survive and a challenge for the limits of medicine for both to survive. We made it,” Gui said.

Both twins suffer from congenital heart disease. The stronger of the two, Jingni, was moved to an intensive care unit after she was separated from her sister late yesterday, the newspaper said.

Jingxuan remained in the operating room overnight because of her frail condition, it said.

Doctors said they were forced to operate because the babies’ condition was deteriorating and they had stopped gaining weight.

The hospital, which has conducted many such operations, began planning the girls’ separation surgery right after their birth. A business group in Taizhou, the twins’ hometown, raised more than 200,000 yuan (€18,000) to help pay for their treatment, reports said.

The twins were born weighing a total of 10 pounds. Before surgery, they weighed 16 pounds, it said.