Because of the danger associated with surgical procedures that attempt to separate conjoined twins, most twins who were born sharing the same body organs and managed to survive literally grow up and grow old stuck with each other. Carl and Clarence Aguirre, who were born sharing the same head, however, have beaten the odds and are now celebrating a decade of living separate from each other.
The boys were born in the Philippines in April 2002 sharing a bridge of brain that measures between five to six centimeters long. After the boy's birth, doctors told their mother Arlene Aguirre, a nurse and single mother, that she needed to choose which of the boys should live.
Arlene said she cannot make such choice and in 2003 brought the boys to the U.S. to have them surgically separated. The twin brothers' case was eventually brought to the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York City, where doctors said that leaving the twins conjoined could have serious consequences. Robert Marion, the twins' pediatrician said that Carl and Clarence could have "withered away and died" had they been left conjoined.
In October 2003, a mere five weeks after Arlene and her twins arrived in the U.S., the boys underwent the first of a series of surgeries. For the next 10 months, the twin brothers continued to have several more surgeries and finally on August 4, 2004, James Goodrich, a pediatric neurosurgeon at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center who took the Aguirre boys' case pro bono, and his medical team did the fourth and final surgery to separate the conjoined twins.
The final surgery was complicated and risky. One wrong move could be fatal but the operation was successful. It did not just separate the twins, both twins also managed to survive. Since the Aguirre boys' successful operation, Goodrich and his team went on to separate four other sets of twins who were joined in the head in Riyadh, Melbourne and London.
"The historical treatment was basically to sacrifice one to save the other," Goodrich said. "The staged separation turned out to be obviously very successful."
Although the boys have medical problems and developmental problems, Carl, for instance, suffers from seizures and cannot yet walk on his own and Clarence has difficulty speaking, Arlene said that she has made the right choice for her children.
"I did the right thing," Arlene said.
