Twins doing 'really well' after separation completed (Roundup)

Aug 8, 2006, 15:26 GMT

Salt Lake City, Utah - Doctors successfully completed a marathon operation Tuesday to separate 4-year-old twin girls joined at mid-torso and said that Kendra and Maliyah Herrin were 'doing really well.'

Surgeons in Salt Lake City, Utah, worked all Monday to separate the girls' liver, intestines, pelvis, sternum and the sac around their heart. They were officially separated just before midnight Monday and immediately began further reconstructive surgery in separate operating theatres through Tuesday morning.

'The girls are technically separated!' their father, Jake Herrin, wrote late Monday on the family's website.

'They are doing great separately,' he added.

The operation at Primary Children's Hospital was billed as the first to try to separate twins who share a kidney. Ahead of the surgery, the girls' medical team said it planned for Kendra to keep the kidney and Maliyah would go on dialysis until she recovers from this week's procedure and could receive a transplant from her mother. Each girl got one of their shared legs.

'It's exciting they're doing really, really well,' said Rebecka Meyers, chief paediatric surgeon at Primary Children's Medical Centre.

The twins are expected to remain in intensive care for about a week and recover in the hospital for at least a month before doctors can consider sending them home, Meyers said.

Conjoined twins occur about once in every 50,000 to 100,000 births. Only about 20 per cent survive to become viable candidates for separation. Twins usually undergo separation surgery around 6 to 12 months after birth, but the Herrin's shared kidney forced a delay.

Despite the risks of the complicated surgery, the family said they had decided to go ahead because the girls saw themselves living separate lives as adults. The family lives in a suburb of Salt Lake City.

Despite their elation, parents Jake and Erin Herrin said they were tempering their expectations until the girls had completed their recovery.

'I don't know that it's set in yet,' Jake Herrin told an early morning news conference. 'We're not going to feel totally comfortable until they're out of the OR (operating room), and everything's stable.'