Surgical separation considered for twins

SURABAYA: Doctors here are considering at length the possibility of separating a pair of twins joined at the chest and stomach.

They say the twins, who were born on Saturday to a poor family in the East Java capital of Surabaya, share two legs, one sex organ and have no anus.

But doctors are weighing up the dangers of surgery to separate them.

"It is very dangerous to operate on them. The most important thing at the moment is that the babies survive," Dr. Oerip Moetedjo, a spokesman from Dr. Soetomo Hospital, was quoted as saying by Antara on Sunday. "They were born prematurely and their irregularities are very rare. It is extremely difficult (to separate them)."

The twins, whose sex was not given, are two of three babies born on Saturday.

The other baby was born without any complications.

On Thursday a two-week-old pair of conjoined twin boys died of complications six weeks ahead of a planned separation surgery in Bandung, West Java. The twins were born with fused lower bodies. --AFP