Twins conjoined at the head are separated in 25-hour surgery

A pair of 2-year-old conjoined twins are seeing each other face to face for the first time after being successfully separated during a complex medical procedure at a St. Louis children’s hospital. 

The girls, Hiyab and Wuhbto, were born in Ethiopia with an extremely rare condition called craniopagus, where they were joined at the head facing in opposite directions. This occurs in less than 6% of all conjoined twins cases, according to the National Library of Medicine — only about once in every 2.5 million live births.  

For nearly two years, the girls could hear each other’s voices but could not see each other’s faces. Leaving them conjoined posed significant risks to their long-term health, SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital said in a news release.

The twins traveled from Ethiopia to Missouri in 2025. At the hospital, a team of nearly 30 medical specialists spent almost a year planning a complicated, high-stakes operation to separate them. 

The girls’ parents were not able to get visas to travel from Ethiopia, so they remained in their home country and the girls traveled with a guardian. The hospital said the efforts were supported by a global network of pediatric providers and charity organizations. 

Hospital officials announced the successful outcome on Wednesday. The surgery itself, conducted in February, took 25 hours, the hospital said. Surgeons had to delicately separate their shared blood vessels. 

Dr. Joanna Kemp, the leader of the surgical team and the first female neurosurgeon in the United States to perform this surgery, said that while their brains “were mostly separate,” doctors had to plan for a few “small areas that were fused” together. At the end of the operation, Kemp said it was “quite wild” to see the girls separated, “even a few feet apart in that operating room.” 

“I think all of us kinda had this moment of pause,” Kemp said. 

The hospital says the girls have reached a “major milestone in their surgical journey” — Wuhbto recently had a successful cranioplasty to complete the repair of her skull, and a similar operation will be performed on Hiyab later this fall. 

The twins are continuing to receive care and rehabilitation at Ranken Jordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital, in Maryland Heights, Missouri, according to the hospital news release. 

SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital told CBS News it hopes to send the girls home to their family in Ethiopia in the near future.