Recovery of conjoined twins who were attached at the HEART are now ready to go home

Scarlett and Savannah were born attached at heart and liver in April
Doctors in Florida spent 8 weeks practicing surgery on 3D printed heart
The procedure in July took 8 hours to painstakingly separate them
To doctors’ astonishment, they now look almost ready to head home
Only 5 per cent of the few twins born conjoined make it past 24 hours alive

Mia De Graaf For Dailymail.com

Published:
11:34 EST, 6 September 2016

|
Updated:
14:11 EST, 6 September 2016

e-mail

View
comments

Conjoined at the heart, twins Savannah and Scarlett were given an almost zero per cent chance of survival.

But astonishingly – to the amazement of their parents and doctors – the two girls have survived separation surgery.

Surgeons in Gainesville, Florida, spent eight weeks practicing the procedure on a 3D print-out of a conjoined heart.

And now, just two months after the operation, they are almost ready to head home with mom Jacquelyn, dad Mark, and their three-year-old sister.

Scroll down for video

Savannah and Scarlett (pictured pre-surgery) were given an almost 0% chance of survival

Survived! Here, the girls are pictured just weeks after the operation

To the amazement of their parents Mark and Jackie (pictured) and doctors, the two girls have survived separation surgery (one of the girls pictured after)

Two months after the operation, they are almost ready to head home with their parents

HOW ARE TWINS FORMED?

Fraternal (non-identical) twins

A woman releases two eggs instead of one, both are fertilized.

She then carries two babies, each in their own amniotic sac.

They are not genetically identical.

Identical twins

A woman releases one egg that fertilizes and splits.

They share the same amniotic sac, and they are genetically identical.

Conjoined twins

This is the same process as with identical twin.

However, the separation process after fertilization does not complete.

The embryo starts to split to form identical twins but instead forms one fetus.

Since only one egg is involved, conjoined twins are always the same gender.

‘They are such strong fighters,’ Jacquelyn wrote on her blog as she revealed the surgery was a success.

One in 49,000 pregnancies are conjoined, but very few make it to birth.

Only five per cent of those that do will live longer than 24 hours.

And it is almost unheard of that twins sharing vital organs can survive independently.

The little girls were attached to each other by the liver, sternum, diaphragm and heart.

Twenty weeks into pregnancy, doctors told Jacquelyn and Mark that there was almost no way the girls would make it through.

According to the ultrasound, they appeared to share the same heart.

But, determined to keep their little girls, the couple sought a second opinion – and found the answer they were looking for.

Dr Jennifer Co-Vu, at UF Health Shands Hospital, did a closer analysis and found that each girl had her own tiny heart – though they were beating at the same time and attached to one another at the atrium.

The odds were still stacked against them, but there was a chance.

The girls were born with a combined birth weight of 10lbs 8oz via c-section at UF Health Shands Hospital on April 12.

Doctors immediately took CT and MRI scans of their organs to make 3D printed copies for practice operations.

Surgeons in Gainesville, Florida, spent eight weeks practicing the procedure on a 3D print-out of a conjoined heart (pictured, held by one of the surgeons)

With no clear separation points, they would have no option but to cut some vessels – trying their best to keep it to a minimum – in order to keep both girls (pictured) alive

The surgery (pictured) spanned an agonizing eight hours in Gainseville, Florida

With no clear separation points, they would have no option but to cut some vessels – trying their best to keep it to a minimum.

The surgery finally took place on July 11, stretching out an agonizing eight hours.

Savannah recovered within hours, Scarlett was swollen for a while longer.

The twin whose birthmark was slowly CHOKING him: Baby nearly…

Skipping to their first day of school, the identical twins…

But now, after weeks on ventilation machines, they are stable and continue to defy the doctors’ beliefs.

‘Every day you go in there and see the babies in separate cribs,’ Dr Mark Bleiweis, director of UF Heart Congenital Heart Center, told the Gainseville Sun.

‘It’s phenomenal.’