Why Kendra and Maliyah Herrin conjoined twins case was special?
A pair of 4 year-old conjoined twins in Salt Lake City, Utah, were successfully separated after a 26-hour separation and reconstruction surgery, according to local media reports on Tuesday. The separation surgery is believed to be the first performed on conjoined twins with a shared kidney, said Dr. Rebecka Meyers, chief of pediatric surgery at the Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City. The girls, named Kendra and Maliyah Herrin, had been born fused at the midsection, sharing a liver, a kidney, a pelvis, one set of legs and part of their intestines. Surgeons gave each girl one leg, split their liver and intestines and reconstructed their bladders and their pelvic rings. Kendra kept their one functioning kidney, while Maliyah was prepped for kidney dialysis and a transplant in three to six months. The surgery, while complicated, had not presented any major surprises for the team of six surgeons, two anesthesiologists, two urologists, one radiologist and more than 25 nurses
Because Kendra and Maliyah shared a kidney, separating them involved monumental issues, and they were the first conjoined twins sharing a kidney to be separated. Kendra was given the kidney during the surgery, and Maliyah was placed on dialysis for some months until she received a kidney transplant, donated by her mother. Sources: www.herrintwins.com and http://www.makli.
Kendra Deene Herrin and Maliyah Mae Herrin, are former conjoined twins.They were joined at the abdomen and the pelvis.They are the first set of conjoined twins to be separated to share a kidney. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.
