CONJOINED twins who have never looked each other in the eye have been given a glimmer of hope they may one day be separated. Doctors tried and failed to separate sisters Tatiana and Anastasia Dogaru, who are joined at the head, in a gruelling ten-hour op in 2007, at the age of three.
Now four years later signs suggest the seven-year-old sisters — known as Tati and Ana — are reaching a point where a separation might be possible.
Their family have been told the girls' blood pressure is finally stable enough again to reattempt the procedure.
In a scientific mystery, Ana's blood pressure has been low, while Tati's was high.
Now a team of specialists in Chicago are looking at new ways of performing the miracle.
With no advances in techniques to separate them safely, the family's greatest hope is that someone will make a breakthrough, which will ensure they can survive the op.
But the family know the longer it takes the more complicated a separation will become as the girls become more fused.
And with conjoined twins rarely living past the age of 11, their parents have been left with an agonising life or death decision — to go ahead with the risky op or to hope that the girls will live until a way to safely separate them is found.
Mum Claudia, a nurse, from Chicago, says they will wait.
The 35-year-old said: "Since the girls were born we've dreamed of giving them lives apart.
"But we can only do it if doctors find a way that will give them a reasonable chance of surviving the op.
"We have a new glimmer of hope but still need someone to come to us with a proposal we can accept.
"There's a level of risk with any surgery to anyone and we accept that. But we need survival odds like that to go forward.
"Remaining together, we just don't know how long they have. Many don't make it past 11."
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