A pair of 15-day-old conjoined twins from Ben Tre Province who shared a liver and breastbone have been separated by doctors at the Ho Chi Minh City-based Children’s Hospital No.1 and discharged from the hospital on January 24.
Children’s Hospital No.1 Director Tang Chi Thuong said January 24 that the baby boy and girl are in stable condition though one of them had been at high risk of death before the surgery.
Dr. Thuong said it was a difficult surgery because one of the babies had a rare heart defect – it had only one auricle and ventricle each instead of two in each chamber.
It took nearly 20 doctors and technicians three hours to complete the surgery on January 14.
Though the doctors had initially planned to carry out the operation only after the babies reached a weight of five kilograms, they advanced it because of the heart problem which had begun to cause complications. The babies together weigh only six kilograms.
The baby with the heart defect will undergo another surgery soon.
The hospital performed the surgery free of cost.
