SANTIAGO, Chile ? Jessica Navarrete and her husband hugged in the doorway of the surgery ward Tuesday morning and kissed their twin babies Maria Paz and Maria Jose.
Inside, an army of experts was ready to try yet again to separate the conjoined twins, this time at the thorax, stomach and pelvic regions. It would be the seventh operation that the girls would undergo in their 10 months alive. This time, Chileans would be watching on television and the Internet.
"Sadness, a lot of sadness," Navarrete said as the operation got under way at the Luis Calvo Mackenna Hospital in the capital of Santiago. "Because one as any mother feels fear, but (I have) faith that everything will turn out well and I'm going to see them separated, because this is my dream.
"A miracle from God is what I'm waiting for."
The twins were still in surgery late Tuesday night and had lost much blood, prompting Navarrete and the girls' father, Roberto Paredes, to issue a call for the public to help out by donating blood.
After 10 hours in the operating theater, doctors had separated the twins at the heart and liver areas. The operation was expected to last until 4 a.m. Wednesday. Only one of the twins would keep the anus and rectum they've shared since birth if the operation proves successful.
"They have come out of adverse situations before, and if they have come out from that, how are they going to fall behind now?" Paredes asked.
Perhaps providing some comfort to the parents was the hospital's history with conjoined twins. Staff there have separated three sets before. A fourth set, however, died during surgery due to cardiac complications.
According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, one out of every 200,000 live births worldwide results in conjoined twins. About 35 percent survive only one day, while the overall survival rate is 5 percent to 25 percent.
The Chilean twins have presented a particularly difficult challenge to doctors because they share many of the same internal organs and even urinary system.
Hospital director Osvaldo Artaza said the risks of the operation couldn't be minimized.
"It's a reality and it's necessary to be super-transparent in warning that one or two girls could die," Artaza said. "But the team ... has committed itself with conviction to try to save the two."
The hospital's chief of surgery, Francisco Ossandon, said the twins' case was the "most complex that has been born in Chile."
"Never have we faced such a high risk," Ossandon said. "We don't have another option from the perspective of the quality of life and the expectations for life of Maria Jose and Maria Paz."
Earlier this year, doctors separated the twins' legs, urinary tracts, pulmonary systems and other parts of their bodies.
Navarrete said it wasn't any easier to wait through Tuesday's operation.
If the twins lived through the separating procedure, each of them would then have to be sewed shut. Some 100 people would participate in the procedure, including 25 surgeons and anesthesiologists.
The twins were born in the Villarrica hospital about 470 miles (760 kilometers) from Santiago and have never left medical care, surviving with the aid of an artificial respirator.
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