Doctors successfully separate conjoined twins after more than 16 hours of surgery

Conjoined twin boys were successfully separated after difficult surgery.

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last updated 14 October 2016

After 16.5 hours of surgery, 13-month-old twin boys born conjoined at the head have been successfully separated. The surgery was completed Friday morning in New York at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, only the 59th time this sort of operation has been attempted since 1952.

After the more than 16-hour-long separation procedure, both Jadon and Anias McDonald underwent "several hours more of surgery to reconstruct their skulls," CNN reported. In total, the surgeon, Dr. James Goodrich, operated on the twins for about 27 hours.

The surgery was exceedingly risky, as the twins were born with "shared blood vessels and brain tissue, a very rare condition that occurs once in about 10 million births," BBC reported. While the boys' parents are celebrating the surgery's success, they remain anxious about what complications may arise. "I should feel so happy…TWO SEPARATE BABIES!!!…and yet I ache with the uncertainty of the future," the boys' mother, Nicole McDonald, wrote on Facebook. "I didn't cry until the surgeons left the room. I was barely able to even utter the words 'thank you' because of the pit that still sits heavy in my stomach."