It’s not every day that conjoined twins get separated, which is why “Las Esmeraldas” is one lucky pair. According to experts, about one out of every 200,000 live births result in conjoined twins, except that depending on where they are joined, many of them don’t ever get separated.
Separating conjoined twins is a high-risk surgery that involves dozens of doctors and many hours in surgery; in this case, the surgery took 15 hours and 70 doctors to complete.
“Las Esmeraldas,” Graciela Esmeralda and Esmeralda Agely were born in August in a town in eastern Guatemala and they shared the large intestine, liver, and part of the pericardium.
At a press conference, Dr. Marco Antonio Barrientos, director of Roosevelt Hospital in Guatemala City, said that the procedure was not too complicated and currently the girls are in a stable condition. “After the separation surgery, the girls will be transferred to the intensive care unit,” the hospital informed via Twitter.
Las siamesas “Esmeraldas” serán separadas el 23 de octubre siendo el tercer caso del Hospital Roosvelt @soy_502 pic.twitter.com/V1tH2OpUQt
— Gabriela Girón (@GabrielaGSoy502) October 17, 2017
This isn’t the first time this type of surgery happens at this hospital, in 2015 they successfully separated Ana Rosa and Aída Rosalin known as “Las Rositas”. These twins were joined at the pelvis and their recovery took about a year because they were not discharged from the hospital until 2016. The recovery can be long, but well worth it in the long-run.