'Magical moment': Conjoined twins AmieLynn and JamieLynn separated after 'historic' 11-hour surgery
FORT WORTH, TEXAS: On Monday, a challenging procedure that was a surgical first for the pediatric hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, successfully separated a pair of conjoined twins. Cook Children’s Medical Center separated conjoined twin sisters AmieLynn Rose and JamieLynn Rae Finley.
The 11-hour-long surgery took place on Monday, January 23, at Cook Children’s, the hospital shared in a news release. A team of 25 medical professionals, including six surgeons, carefully performed this historic surgery, while parents Amanda Arciniega and James Finley patiently waited for news of their twins' separation. While still very early, both AmieLynn and JamieLynn are recovering well, the hospital announced.
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“Our team at Cook Children’s was honored to bring together our collective expertise in treating high-risk infants and conducting complex surgery to help AmieLynn and JamieLynn reach this incredible milestone,” said Jose L Iglesias, MD, Medical Director of Pediatric Surgery at Cook Children’s Medical Center and the lead surgeon for twins’ surgery.
“The separation surgery will give AmieLynn and JamieLynn better opportunities to improve their health and development, and to grow as the unique, individual little girls that they have been since birth, regardless of their physical connection as conjoined twins,” he said.
The hospital said, JamieLynn and AmieLynn are omphalopagus twins, which means they are joined at the abdomen and share one or more internal organs. In their specific case, they were joined from the lower part of the breastbone to their belly button and shared a liver. Conjoined twins, the doctors say are rare; it’s estimated to occur in 1-in-200,000 live
births. In fact, each year, only five to eight conjoined twins worldwide survive the first few days after birth.
The girls were born prematurely on October 3, 2022, at 34 weeks gestation, weighing 4 pounds and 7.8 ounces at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth, the news release added. "This is a historic, amazing day," said Wini King, senior vice president and chief of communications, diversity, equity, and inclusion for the Cook Children's Health Care System, at a news conference held on Wednesday as per CBC News. "This is a magical moment for Cook Children's," echoed Rick Merrill, the president and CEO of the hospital, in his own remarks at the conference.
In the coming weeks and months, AmieLynn and JamieLynn will continue to receive outstanding care from Cook Children’s Medical Center’s neonatology and NICU teams, focusing on their healing and continued growth and development.
