Siamese twin sisters in China's Hunan Province were declared out of danger Thursday as they were transferred from the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital about two weeks after separation surgery.
Doctors at the Hunan Children's Hospital in the provincial capital of Changsha successfully separated the twins on April 1. The girls were born connected from their breastbones to their abdomens, with one liver. They were separated just two weeks after birth.
At their one-month check-up Thursday, one baby weighed 3,050 grams and the other 3,095 gm. They weighed 4,800 gm together at birth on March 16. They were both 49 cm long Thursday.
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The conjoined twins are seen before the separation surgery at Hunan Children's Hospital in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, April 1, 2009. A pair of conjoined twin girls were successfully separated on Wednesday after a six-and-half hour operation and in a stable condition. The twins were born joined at the abdomen and shared same umbilical cord in Xinhua County of Loudi City in Hunan Province on March 16, 2009. [Xinhua] |
?"Their weight and height have normalized," said Zhu Yimin, director of the hospital.
He said that each twin could drink 80 milliliters of milk formula per day. "We will continue to control their milk intake, because their liver functions are still weak," said the doctor.
The twins were fed intravenously and depended on respirators during their first week of life.
Doctors said both were out of danger of infection from septicemia and severe pneumonia.
Their 28-year-old mother, Duan Xiaoyan, was allowed to touch her babies and learn to massage them Thursday, after the twins were transferred to a neonatal ward.
Zhu said this was the hospital's first separation surgery of Siamese twins.
Worldwide, only 200 of about 600 Siamese, or conjoined, births known to medical science had undergone separation operations, and many of the separated twins had died, said Zhu.
(Xinhua News Agency April 17, 2009)