Doctors separate conjoined twins

Surgeons in California have separated conjoined twin girls, in a highly complex operation which lasted more than 12 hours. The 10-month-old girls, Regina and Renata Salinas Fierros, were joined from the lower chest to the pelvis. A medical team of 80 began operating on the pair at 0600 (1300 GMT) at a hospital in Los Angeles, and cut the last pelvic bone joining them at 1820. Born of Mexican parents, the twins shared a number of organs. Their liver, intestines and pelvis were among those which needed dividing. Regina is the weaker of the pair, with only one kidney. Parents 'relaxed' The scene in the operating theatre was described as orderly calm, as one of the twins was moved to an adjacent room after separation. Doctors are expected to continue work through the night reconstructing the twins' chest walls and pelvis regions, and sewing up surgical wounds. Regina (left) and Renata face a complex surgical procedure Surgical director Henri Ford told the Associated Press the girls "looked very healthy and quite good". "Everything has been going impeccably as one could possibly imagine," he said. Dr Ford said the twins' parents were "relaxed and pleased with the progress". Lead surgeon James Stein and fellow senior medic Dominic Femino both participated in a successful operation to separate conjoined twins in 2003. If twins have separate sets of organs, the chances for survival tend to be greater than if the organs are shared. The two girls have US citizenship after being born in Los Angeles while their parents were visiting the country on a tourist visa. Several hundred conjoined twins are born every year worldwide. Conjoined twins originate from a single fertilised egg, so they are always identical and of the same sex. The overall survival rate of conjoined twins is somewhere between 5% and 25%. Over the past 500 years, historical records show about 600 surviving sets of conjoined twins with more than 70% of the surviving pairs being female. Link

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[Tan Man]

These are nice words:

'Cuz you believed in me through my darkest night
Put something better inside of me
You brought me into the light.
Threw away all those crazy dreams
I've put them all behind
And it was you, woman, right down the line.

--Gerry Rafferty, "Right Down the Line"