14 DAY TRIAL // This March 26, a pair of conjoined twin girls were born to a woman in Indonesia. The baby girls, pictured below, were delivered by doctors at the Soetomo Hospital on the island of Java.
Their mother is now in stable condition. The twins, however, are not doing all that great. Thus, their doctors say that they are joined both at the chest and the abdomen, and share a single heart.
Over the years, surgeons at the Soetomo hospital have operated on over 50 pairs of conjoined twins and have managed to save most of them. However, it looks like these two girls cannot be separated.
This is because, as mentioned, they only have one heart and share it. To save them both, doctors would have to find a donor heart for one of them. It is highly unlikely that this will happen.
Besides, being joined at the chest and the abdomen, chances are that the twins display other anatomical abnormalities that would endanger their life, were doctors to try and separate them.
According to DM, the twin girls are currently kept in the Soetomo Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Doctors are closely monitoring them and assessing the chances to successfully operate on them.
Conjoined twins are fairly rare
Medical experts say that, as shown by recent reports, conjoined twins occur once in every 200,000 births. About 40 to 60% are born already dead and another 35% fail to make it through their first day.
Babies united at the chest and abdomen are known as thoracopagi. They account for 18.5% of all instances of conjoined twins. Because the heart is always involved, parting them is nearly impossible.
As explained by specialists, conjoined twins occur either when two eggs produced by a woman fuse together following fertilization or when an egg divides and the resulting twins later become joined.
Although not often, it sometimes happens that conjoined twins survive and even reach adulthood. Thus, Giacomo and Giovanni Battista from Ohio, US, are believed to be the world's oldest conjoined twins.
The two men were born in 1951 and turned 63 back in last year's October. Giacomo and Giovanni Battista share the lower digestive tract, the groin area, and the rectum.
It is understood that, when they were born, doctors offered to try and separate them. Their parents, however, preferred not to risk their life and instead decided to keep them united.
