Jakarta: Doctors in Indonesia are baffled by the birth of the country's first disephalic dibrachius twins - a rare type of conjoined twins born with two heads, one body with two legs and two arms.
The twins, girls whose parents gave only one name: Syafitri, were born on Monday (August 7) at a Jakarta hospital, where they are being closely observed.
The twins were born to a 30-year-old mother and 32-year-old father and weighed 3.95 kilograms and 45 centimetres in length at the time of birth.
"The biggest challenge now is treating the heart, because there is quite a complex deformity which could only be fixed by conducting surgery," said Ketut Lila Murti, pediatrician of the Pelni Petamburan Hospital where the twins were born under cesarian surgery.
"They can survive and live a long life if we could overcome the heart problems, no other problem hindering them from being able to live. At the moment we are exploring all possible diagnostic tests to understand fully the functions of their internal organs," Murti said and added that the twins would soon be moved to the country's main cardiac hospital.
"We're penniless, but whatever comes our way every parents want what's best for their children. I also hope for the best for my children. My wife no longer needs to be treated in the hospital now but my baby will still be there for a while and I'm wondering what to do about the costs," father of the twins, Mulyadi said.
Conjoined twins occur in an estimated one in 2,00,000 births with only 5 to 25 per cent survival rate. Syafitri has two spines, but only one heart, one set of lungs and one
stomach.
The most recent high profile disephalic conjoined twins are American twins Abigail Loraine Hensel and Brittany Lee Hensel, born in 1990 and just turned 16 in March, who share many bodily functions but manage one side of their conjoined body - each girl having different tastes in food and fashion, as well as writing with own hand.
Unlike Syafitri, the Hensel twins have two hearts, two stomachs and three lungs.
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