It happened earlier this year -- but doctors at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital are now announcing they have successfully performed a rare surgery to separate two little girls from Ethiopia who were born joined at the head.
It took the Cardinal Glennon medical team more than 24 hours to separate the twin two-year old sisters - Hiyab and Wubto. Lead neuro-plastic surgeon for the surgery, Dr. Kevin Chen, "The challenge that we faced was both neurosurgical in separating brain and vasculature as well as reconstructive in that they were missing a lot of tissue, both bone and skin because of the way they were joined at the head."
Dr. Chen says there are no words to describe the feeling he had when the girls were able to see each other face to face for the first time. They are doing well, he says, but still have a couple surgeries to go including skull reconstructions.
There have only been 62 attempts at separating twins joined at the head.
