Around 100 doctors and nurses at City Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital 1 and 2, Cho Ray Hospital and others in HCM City on Wednesday took part in a successful operation to separate conjoined twins. 

Doctors have successfully separated conjoined twins at the City Children’s Hospital in HCM City. — Photo courtesy of the City Children’s Hospital

The twins are 13 months old and weigh 15 kilogrammes, and are in good health. Because their development indexes are the same as healthy children, doctors said the surgery was now safe to perform.

Doctors said they would perform additional operations on the children, including plastic surgery.

When the twins were delivered last year in June, the City Children’s Hospital said they were joined at the pelvis and all four lower extremities were present and oriented at right angles to the axis of the common trunk. The twins, who weighed 3.2 kilogrammes at the time, were then brought to City Children’s Hospital.

Last year, when the woman's pregnancy reached 16 weeks, doctors detected that the twins shared one umbilical cord. At 33 weeks, doctors decided to operate and deliver the twins.

The rate of conjoined twins worldwide is 1 per 200,000 live births. Among the rate, only 6 per cent are classified as ischiopagus tetrapus conjoined twins, which means they were joined at the pelvis.

Source: VNS