A 4-year-old girl who was separated from her twin sister last month in a 26-hour operation will undergo additional surgery Wednesday, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Kendra Herrin started showing signs of a bowel obstruction Friday. Doctors at Primary Children’s Medical Center believe scar tissue from the surgery is causing the obstruction. If scar tissue becomes a problem, it typically starts after about three weeks.
Hospital spokeswoman Laura Winder said the bowel surgery will be done by Dr. Michael Matlak, a pediatric surgeon who participated in the twins’ initial separation surgery.
Kendra and Maliyah Herrin, who were joined at the mid-torso, were separated in a marathon surgery that started Aug. 7. They were moved from intensive care to regular hospital rooms last week.
Conjoined twins occur about once in every 50,000 to 100,000 births. Only about 20 percent survive to become viable candidates for separation.
In Washington on Wednesday, neurosurgeons at Children’s National Medical Center began separating another set of conjoined twins. Brothers Mateo Asher Shaw and McHale Twain Shaw of Sheboygan, Wis., were born in May joined at the lower back. The procedure was expected to take 14 to 23 hours.
The boys’ parents have said they are optimistic about the operation, as well as the long-term prognosis for the boys, who both have spina bifida.
“That’s the only way you can go into something like this,” the boys’ father, Ryan Shaw, said in an interview last week.
