A medical team in Switzerland have successfully separated conjoined siblings, Maya and Lydia, who were born two months premature last week.
Joined at the chest and liver, the infants' medical team were forced to reconsider their initial decision to wait a number of weeks before performing surgery after the little girls developed hypertension and hypotension meaning that the children would become the youngest individuals in history to undergo the procedure.
Maya and Lydia, whose triplet Kamilla was not joined to them, underwent a five-hour operation and, according to the head of the paediatric surgery unit at the Geneva University Hospital, the prognosis for the little girls was, tragically, far from positive.
Speaking in the aftermath of the surgery, Barbara Wildhaber confirmed that the team at the Swiss hospital had feared the potential outcome, saying: "We were prepared for the death of both babies, it was so extreme."
Understandably overjoyed that her patients survived the gruelling surgery, Dr, Wildhaber reflected on the event, insisting: "It was magnificent! I will remember it my entire career."
Maya and Lydia are among 200 successfully separated conjoined twins in the world.
