Twins' surgeons dubbed 'heroes'

Moira Kelly says it feels like being in the "twilight zone" to be able to stand between the two-year-old girls in two separate beds for the first time in their lives.

"To see these two beautiful little people, two brave, brave little girls ... and I'm in the middle of them," Ms Kelly told reporters.

"I can't comprehend, it's like being in the twilight zone.

"They are so good and looking really good.

"They are in two cots and I was standing in the middle of them, which is something I've never done before."

She gave an emotional thankyou to the surgical team at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital which separated the girls in a marathon 31-hour operation earlier this week.
   
"They are the real heroes," Ms Kelly said.

Royal Children's Hospital chief surgeon Leo Donnan earlier on Wednesday said there was currently no evidence the girls had suffered any brain damage.
   
They underwent MRI scans, but Ms Kelly said she could not give details.

Ms Kelly's Children First Foundation was instrumental in bringing the girls from their Dhaka orphanage to medical treatment in Australia.

Surgery was 'surreal'

One of the surgeons involved in the procedure describes the surgery as 'surreal'.

Andrew Greensmith, a plastic and maxillofacial surgeon from New Zealand, says he was holding the heads of the Bangladeshi twins at the final moment of separation by the neurosurgeons.

"It was quite bizarre to see them apart for a change ... quite surreal," he told NZ radio station NewstalkZB.

He said in the final moments of surgery, after nearly 30 hours, the neurosurgeons asked him to move the heads slightly apart.

"We took the brakes off the beds in the operating theatre and literally, millimetre by millimetre, started to push the beds apart," he said.
   
"We were just checking they had no final little strands of blood vessels or tissue. We didn't want to move quickly and tear anything."

He said by then the connections between the two girls were "down to a few gossamer-type, flimsy strands, some of them small blood vessels, remaining little pieces of tissue."

"We had most of it cleared before we even started to dare try to move the heads apart."

He said there were areas they found which could not be seen or predicted in the preparation for surgery.

That included two areas of brain which they originally thought might be a "button" but which were joined and had to be separated.

But Greensmith said the operation went very smoothly.

"There were no scares what-so-ever throughout the operation," Greensmith said.