The three-week-old conjoined twins Nguyen Van Cu and Nguyen Van Co prior to the surgery. They were successfully separated Wednesday at Hanoi’s Central Children Hospital.

Doctors from the Hanoi-based Central Children Hospital Wednesday successfully operated on a pair of conjoined twins who were born with their abdomen attached.

At around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, head of the operation team, Dr. Nguyen Thanh Liem, announced the two-hour operation was successful.

After the operation, conducted by 20 local and foreign doctors and specialists, Co received treatment for a digestion abnormality while Cu, born with a heart abnormality, was examined for a possible heart surgery that could take place next week.

Surgeons said the twins had shared one third of their breastbones stretching to their navels, but had separate internal organs.

The Central Children Hospital had sponsored the total cost of the operation, estimated at VND100 million (US$5,800).

Cu and Co were born to Dam Thi Chuyen and her husband Nguyen Van Loi. The farming couple live in a small house in a rural mountainous hamlet in Nghe An Province’s Quynh Luu District.

Previous ultrasonography results of the pregnant mother, one at six months of pregnancy and the other prior to the caesarean, hadn’t shown the twins as being joined.

They have an eight-year-old daughter, who has no abnormality.

In 1988, doctors from Hanoi-based Viet Duc Hospital successfully operated on conjoined twins Nguyen Viet and Nguyen Duc. The two boys from the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum originally shared a leg, an abnormal lower limb, a bladder, a sex organ and an anus.

Earlier in May 1986, Viet began to suffer from encephalitis, which led to the surgery to avoid similar complications spreading to Duc. Their condition has been attributed to their parents’ exposure to Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide sprayed on the Vietnamese countryside and its civilian inhabitants during the Vietnam War.

After the operation, Viet went into a vegetative state and died in October of last year, while Duc was saved and leads a normal life.

Source: TN, Agencies