A set of conjoined twin boys died a day after they were born. Eli and Asa Hamby were born in Atlanta last week.
The twins shared a heart, torso, arms, and legs, but had two spinal columns, which supported their heads. The heart that they shared started to fail the day after they were born, with one half of the heart beating more than 300 times a minute. Treatment could not control this rapid heartbeat. The twins were also on a ventilator.
Eli and Asa died at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston. They had been transferred there from Northside Hospital in Atlanta, where they has been born.
The announcement of their deaths was made by their parents in a sad Facebook video. "I am so sad to say that my sons passed away today at 5 o'clock," their father, Michael Hamby said on Friday. "They fought long and hard."
The live birth of conjoined twins is very rare because most such babies do not survive delivery. Conjoined twins occur about once in every 200,000 live births, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. About 40 to 60% are stillborn, and another 35% die within a day after birth.
Conjoined twins are identical twins that are joined together, either as two fully formed or almost fully formed but joined babies, or as babies that share large parts of one body. There are two theories on why conjoined twins occur. Either a fertilized egg splits incompletely (a complete split would result in identical twins), or a fertilized eggs splits and then partly joins back together.
In some cases, conjoined twins can be surgically separated. However, the success rate of such surgery depends on how connected the twins are, where they are connected, and how many organs they share.
