A 12-week old conjoined twin girls from Jiangxi Province will undergo hip surgery at the Children's Hospital of Fudan University tomorrow.
The twins were born on March 17 at a county hospital in Ganzhou City. Prenatal checks had confirmed they were twins but it was only during their delivery that their deformity was detected.
They were then sent to the Children's Hospital of Fudan University, which has handled similar cases before.
In this case, the girls are connected on the hips and share one anus. Doctors said they were connected by soft tissues of the hips and lower part of the spines. Using a 10-centimeter anal tube, they have separated their digestive systems.
Experts believe the best time for a surgery is when the twins are 3 months old and have a combined weight of 10 kilograms. The hospital is using 3D printing technology to rebuild the twins' conjoined parts to simulate the entire procedure.
The hospital allowed the parents to stay with them for their psychological development and healthy growth. A charity group donated 200,000 yuan ($32,258) ahead of the surgery.
The twins weigh 9.55 kilograms and are strong enough to undergo surgery.
Doctors said the surgery could last up to five hours that involved separation, repairing of the nerve systems, rebuilding of anus and the surrounding muscle ring of the rectum.
Conjoined twins are a rare congenital deformity with incidence of one in 200,000 in the world. Most of them are connected with the chest and belly. The connection of hips are rare and only covers 18 percent of all the cases.
