Conjoined Twins Separated in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY - Doctors took about an hour Tuesday to separate 7-month-old conjoined twins who were fused at the lower back.

Physicians at Primary Children's Medical Center made the first incision at 10:20 a.m. and finished separating Allyson and Avery Clark by 11:26 a.m., said Dr. John Kestle, who coordinated the procedure.

"It really couldn't be any better. There was no bad news at all," their father, Kerry Clark, said.

The girls had been joined at the bottom of their spinal cords. Doctors also had to separate some of the girls' shared tissue, muscles and nerves.

Allyson and Avery spent about 6 1/2 hours in the operating room before being placed in separate beds for the first time.

There is a possibility that nerves controlling the bladder and lower legs may not be fully functioning. Doctors probably won't know until the girls are old enough to use the toilet, Kestle said.

"All I can say is their feet seem to be working," he said.

The surgery comes 10 months after Maliyah and Kendra Herrin, now 5, were separated at the same hospital. It was the fourth separation surgery at the hospital since 1998.

The Clark surgery was not as difficult. The Herrin twins were joined mid-torso and shared a kidney, a liver, a bladder and other organs. Their separation and subsequent reconstructive surgery lasted 26 hours.

The Clark girls are expected to spend about a week in the hospital before going home to Hill Air Force Base near Ogden, where their father is an F-16 crew chief. Kerry Clark, 28, had been stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in California but transferred to Utah so his daughters could have the surgery.

There is a set of conjoined twins in every 50,000 to 100,000 live births. Only about 20 percent survive to become viable candidates for separation and most separation surgeries occur when twins are a year old or younger.