In St. Louis, two sisters who had shared a skull since birth were separated after a 24-hour surgical procedure, waking to see each other face-to-face for the first time in their two years of life. The condition — craniopagus, occurring in roughly one in 2.5 million births — demands not merely division but reconstruction, a careful remapping of bone, vessel, and neural pathway. That this surgery succeeded is a testament to how far human ingenuity has carried medicine, and what it means for these children is something older and simpler: the possibility of a life that is entirely one's own.
Conjoined twins separated in landmark 24-hour surgery
Two young children underwent major surgical intervention to separate their conjoined bodies, requiring extensive medical intervention at age two.