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conjoined twins Abygail and Madysen Fitterer that were separated
at Mayo Clinic are doing rather well two weeks after the surgical
operation. Doctors said that the twins are growing stronger every day.
The Siamese twins were born joined at chest (xiphopagus), and are
currently on life support with ventilators. However their lungs are
growing and they need less and less of a breathing support.
The newborn girls were in cardiac intensive care unit but are now in
pediatric intensive care unit at Mayo Clinic and are on a long way to
a recovery.
Formally speaking, conjoined twins are those twins who have joined
body parts. This rare process happens when the zygote of
identical twins does not fully separate and creates two joined bodies
rather than two separate ones. Conjoined twins happen only about once
per 200,000 birth cases and are often stillborn. The chances of
survival for the Siamese twins are usually below thirty percent and
most of these twins are females.
Through the history there were many famous conjoined twins. The most
famous pair - Chinese brothers Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874) - were
born in city of Siam, which is now known as Thailand. The twins
joined the P.T. Barnum's circus and made a living traveling with this
circus during their lifetime. It is after these twins and the city of
Siam the term Siamese Twins is coined, and is now used as a synonym
for a formal medical term conjoined twins. The Chinese brothers were
joined at the chest and could be surgically separated these days,
like the girl twins at Mayo Clinic.
Sometimes conjoined twins have part of their brains joined together
and such cases are the most difficult surgical operations of
separation.
One of the Siamese twins may develop normally, while the second one
may act as a parasite of the body of the fully developed twin-
condition known as asymmetric conjoined twins or parasitic twinning.
In some rare cases one twin absorbs another in their development which
doctors call inclusion twinning. |
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