Share

Doctors Successfully Separate Youngest-Ever Conjoined Twins In Switzerland

They are identical twins who in rare cases like around one in 200,000 live births, are born with their skin and internal organs fused together.

Advertisement

A pair of eight-day-old conjoined twin girls were separated by doctors in Switzerland.

Medics in Bern, Switzerland carried out the operation risky operation on girls Lydia and Maya over five hours with a 13-strong team.

The surgery was organized by Bern University Hospital’s Department of Paediatric Surgery who worked with a team of pediatric surgeons from the Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève (HUG).

Separation of conjoined twins is not a new thing is modern world where we have effective techniques to do the job, but Swiss surgeons registered their names in record book by successfully separating youngest ever conjoined twins. Their condition was stable and doctors initially planned to wait for a few months before separating them. The identical twins, Lydia and Maya, were born on December 2 two months earlier.

Because a “great amount of blood flowed from one child to another through the liver”, one baby had extremely high blood pressure.

When the girls, Lydia and Maya, were born last month in December, they were connected at the liver. Wildhaber said the team was prepared for a scenario wherein they can not save both babies but the ground-breaking surgery proved successful.

Since the surgery, both babies have put on weight and begun breast feeding. The situation was serious, so the doctors made a decision to take risk and attempt the surgery on young babies.

The head of paediatric surgery, Steffen Berger, paid tribute to the medical staff, saying: “The ideal teamwork of physicians and nursing personnel from various disciplines were the key to success here”.

The pair is among around 200 separated conjoined twins now living around the globe.

Like healthy twins, they develop from a single egg – but it doesn’t completely split.

Advertisement

“It was magnificent! I will remember it my entire career”, Wildhaber said.

Doctors at Switzerland's Inselspital hospital