Separated Twins Increasingly Alert

The Guatemalan twins born joined at the head and separated last week during a marathon operation were more alert Sunday with both girls moving their hands and legs, UCLA hospital officials said.

Maria de Jesus Quiej and Maria Teresa Alvarez were in critical condition with stable vital signs in the pediatric intensive care unit of UCLA’s Mattel Children’s Hospital, said Roxanne Moster, hospital spokeswoman.

“Maria de Jesus is much more alert and actually looking around,” Moster said. “Both are now receiving intravenous nutrition and are tolerating it fairly well.”

Physicians took more than 22 hours to separate the heads of the 1-year-old girls who shared bone and several key blood vessels but had separate brains. On Sunday their heads remained heavily bandaged.

Physicians theorized that Maria de Jesus might be making more progress than her sister because she hadn’t undergone five extra hours of surgery that Maria Teresa endured to remove a buildup of blood on her brain, Moster said. Both girls had opened their eyes and responded to stimuli.

The girls have begun to move their hands and legs and have become more alert as physicians steadily reduced their sedation, Moster said

The parents, Wenceslao Quiej Lopez, 21, and Alba Leticia Alvarez, 22, brought the twins from Belen, Guatemala, an impoverished town about 120 miles from Guatemala City with limited electricity and no running water.

They arrived in Los Angeles on June 7 and celebrated their first birthday July 25. The surgery that began last Monday and ran into Tuesday required a team of 50 people, UCLA officials said.

“Doctors say [the girls] still have a lot of hurdles to overcome, but they are cautiously optimistic about their recovery,” Moster said.