Jun 16, 2006 10:55 pm US/Eastern
Separated Twins' Condition Stable
LOS ANGELES (AP) ―
Formerly conjoined twin babies were in intensive care cribs Friday as doctors watched closely for signs of any problems in the first critical days following a lengthy separation surgery.
Ten-month-old Regina and Renata Salinas were in serious but stable condition at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.
They were on ventilators and were being sedated "for their comfort," spokesman Steve Rutledge said.
There was no sign of infection or other problems but no indication of when they might be transferred out of the intensive care unit, he added.
The twins were born facing each other and joined from the lower chest to the pelvis. They were separated in a surgery that began Wednesday morning and ended before dawn Thursday.
Surgeons cut open the breastbone, split the diaphragm and divided several fused internal organs including the liver, bladder and genitals. The twins shared a large intestine and doctors gave it to Renata. Regina might require a colostomy later in life, doctors said.
The girls' parents, Sonia Fierros, 23, and Federico Salinas, 36, came from Mexico. They have not decided whether they will return.
An estimated few hundred pairs of conjoined twins are born worldwide each year. In the U.S., they occur 1 in every 200,000 live births.
Conjoined twins form when a single fertilized egg fails to divide completely to create two distinct individuals. The Salinas Fierros sisters were a rare type of conjoined twins, occurring in about 10 percent of cases.
(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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