Two separate girls! Packard Children’s surgeons separate conjoined twins

Two separate girls! Packard Children’s surgeons separate conjoined twins

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Angelica and Angelina

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Today’s surgery to separate conjoined twins Angelina and Angelica Sabuco is progressing well.

The twins have been successfully separated, and are now in different rooms for the first time in their lives. Each girl will be in an operating room in the Ford Family Surgery Center at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital for an estimated two to three hours of reconstructive surgery.

From the hospital’s pre-surgery press release, a few more details about the plan for reconstruction and surgical recovery:

> Peter Lorenz, MD, and his team will rebuild the girls’ chest and abdominal walls. They will implant a thick, custom-made resorbable plate in each girl’s chest where the sternum should be, and graft bone pieces removed during the separation onto the plates.

> “The plates will dissolve over about a year and a half,” Lorenz said. “That gives the grafted bone plenty of time to fuse, so eventually the girls will have normal bones and stable chests.”

> Afterward, the girls will be in intensive care, where they’ll recover for four to five days before being moved to a regular room for another week or so. Then they’ll head home to San Jose to start their lives as two ordinary little girls.

For more developments, follow the hashtag #conjoinedtwins on Twitter.

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Conjoined twins Angelina and Angelica Sabuco underwent separation surgery at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital on November 1, 2011.

Angelina and Angelica on Christmas Eve, 2010

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Photos from Angelica and Angelina's November 1, 2011 Surgery

Photos courtesy of Lucile Packard Children's Hospital

Lead surgeon Dr. Gary Hartman

�nesthesiologist Dr. Gail Boltz

The operating room 

>>> FULL ARTICLE at: Two separate girls! Packard Children’s surgeons separate conjoined twins <<<

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* Photo showing the twins at their pre-surgery “meet the press” event on October 31, courtesy Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital

** Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and patient care at its three institutions - Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.

***  The above story is adapted from materials provided by Stanford University School of Medicine

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   Two separate girls! Packard Children’s surgeons separate conjoined twins is an article review from: Medicinezine.com