Conjoined twins separated in marathon surgery

UNITED STATES: Ten-month-old conjoined twins attached from the lower chest to the pelvis were separated after a daylong operation, a hospital spokesman said.

The last pelvic bone connecting Regina and Renata Salinas Fierros was cut at 6:20 p.m. after a long and complex surgery at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

There was an "orderly calm" in the operating room as doctors moved one of the twins to another room, said spokesman Steve Rutledge. "They seem to be doing fine," Rutledge said of the twins.

Doctors planned to work through the night reconstructing the girls' chest walls and pelvis regions and sewing up surgical wounds. The girls remained sedated.

Surgical director Dr. Henri Ford said earlier in the day that the sisters "looked very healthy and quite good" throughout the operation. "Everything has been going impeccably as one could possibly imagine," he said.

The twins, who were born facing each other, were wheeled into the operating room shortly before 6 a.m. and went under anesthesia. Doctors made their first delicate incision at the breastbone three hours later and then worked their way toward dividing the liver, bladder and genitalia.

The babies' parents waited one floor below the operating room.

"They are very relaxed and very pleased with the progress," Ford said. The identical twins, born to Mexican parents who came to the U.S. on a tourist visa, were fused at the front, but had separate heads, necks, shoulders, hearts, lungs, arms and legs. Regina was born with one kidney.

Los Angeles, Thursday AP