A surgical first

last updated 8 January 2015

Salt Lake City

Surgeons this week separated two 4-year-old sisters who were born joined at the waist and shared a kidney, liver, pelvis, part of the large intestine, and two legs. Rebecka Meyers, chief pediatric surgeon at Primary Children’s Pediatric Center, said the 16-hour operation on Kendra and Maliyah Herrin marked the first time doctors had successfully separated conjoined twins who shared a single kidney. Kendra will retain the kidney, while Maliyah is scheduled to receive a kidney from their mother in about three weeks. The girls face additional operations to reconstruct bones and various organs, and each will get a prosthetic leg. “Most people say, ‘You made it through in one piece,’ Jake Herrin, the girls’ father, joked after the surgery. “We can say, ‘You guys made it through in two.’”