Conjoined Twins Are Separated

The outlook for two conjoined twins whose heads were separated in an operation in Los Angeles yesterday was said by the hospital to be good, despite one of them suffering a haematoma.

The complication of bleeding on the brain came five hours after a 22-hour operation to separate Maria Teresa Quiej-Alvaraz from her sister Maria de Jesus.

After separating the Guatemalan sisters, doctors said that they hoped that they would soon be playing and behaving like any other children. "Everyone had goosebumps at the end of the procedure," Dr Houmann Hemmati said.

The girls, who were attached at the top of the skull, will now be able to see each other for the first time.

Dr Hemmati said the original operation had been less complex than feared because the brains were separate.

"That made it a lot easier for us to actually separate the two twins," he said.

A join at the head occurs in only 2% of cases in which twins are born conjoined.

The sisters had been brought from their home in rural Guatemala for the operation by a medical charity.

Doctors donated their services, but there is still an outstanding bill of around $1.5m for hospital treatment and tests, for which donations are being sought.

The twins' parents, Wenceslao Quiej Lopez and Alba Leticia Alvarez, were in the hospital during the operation.