Four-month-old Texas twins Ella Grace and Eliza Faith Fuller, born conjoined in March, have been released a month after their surgical separation at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
The twins’ parents, Jesse and Sandy Fuller, took their girls home for the first time after the family spent months in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
“From the beginning to the end, we were guided, informed, and comforted. We are so grateful God put some of the best doctors and nurses in our lives to give our girls the best chance at life. We truly love Texas Children’s,” said Sandy in a press release from the hospital.
Much preparation went into the complex but life-changing surgery to separate the twins, who were sharing liver tissue at birth.
Upon learning that she was expecting conjoined twins during her second trimester, Sandy entered into the care of Texas Children’s Fetal Center. She underwent extensive prenatal testing and imaging to see whether separation would be possible and prepare for the delivery.
“Conjoined twin pregnancies are incredibly rare and very high-risk, so it’s important that an expectant mother receive care from a highly-skilled maternal-fetal medicine team,” explained Dr. Roopali Donepudi, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who delivered the girls via C-section at Texas Children’s Hospital Pavilion for Women, per the press release.
Ella and Eliza were transferred to the hospital’s NICU shortly after their birth, and a specialized plan for their separation surgery was underway.
On June 14, a team of 17 medical professionals carried out a six-hour-long surgery to separate the twins and give them a chance at having healthy lives.
The operation was a success, and the twins made a speedy recovery in the NICU, where their parents were able to hold them separately for the first time ever just three days after the procedure.
A team of surgeons at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth performed the same rare separation surgery for the first time at their facility on another pair of conjoined twins in January, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
JamieLynn and AmieLynn Finley were born sharing a liver last October. After undergoing an 11-hour surgery, the twins were successfully separated and returned home in April.
Conjoined twins, which occur in roughly one out of every 50,000 pregnancies in the United States, are most often born female, but doctors do not know why. The survival rate for twins born conjoined at the abdomen, as was the case for both the Fuller and Finley twins, is 82%. However, only 60% of formerly conjoined twins tend to survive after separation surgery.
