The conjoined female twins born early this week has a better chance of survival when they are together as the baby with the healthy heart is helping her twin with the congenital heart defect, results of the examinations performed by doctors at the Philippine Heart Center (PHC) revealed.

Dr. Ludgerio Torres, PHC hospital director, said the survival of the conjoined twins with the condition known as 'dicephaly thoracopagus' is the utmost priority of doctors at the moment and not on whether it is possible to separate the two babies.

Last Thursday night, PHC experts performed the CT Angiogram test to the twins now known as Nicole and Ann to determine whether the blood circulation of the twins are functioning separately. The result of the test is “favorable,’ Dr. Torres said, emphasizing that baby B (Nicole, the one at the left side) has a normal heart compared to her twin.

Dr. Torres said, "Baby B has a normal heart. It is also on her side where we saw the stomach. They have two spinal cords but upon reaching the pelvis, the spinal cord or vertebral column joined or became one. We did not see anything abnormal with the baby on the left. Compared to the baby on the right, the left baby's blood circulation is normal. There is a separate blood with carbon dioxide and blood from the lungs with oxygen, it is not mixed.

That way, baby B is able to pump the blood 100 percent to the different parts of the body. That is why the head of baby B is pink because the partition of the heart is complete. In contrast, baby A has a hole in the heart known as Atrial Septal defect wherein there is only one chamber. This is why baby A's head is bluish because the oxygen content of her heart is only 50 percent."

He added that Baby A is missing the required right and left ventricle.

"She has a single ventricle that pumps the blood that circulates within the whole body. So the oxygenated blood and the blood with the carbon dioxide is getting mixed up."

"Baby B is helping baby A in terms of oxygen delivery," Dr. Torres emphasized. "The good thing about this is that the two babies help each other. Baby A with the defect is being helped by baby B because baby B is able to add oxygen to baby A. With this set up, there is a bigger chance for the baby B to help baby A to live."

Aside from sharing one pair of arms and legs, the twins also share a stomach and each twin has one liver. They also have two lungs, two kidneys and one reproductive organ.

The twins are at risk of having Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension as they have only one lungs each. "There should be two lungs each for one heart. But in this case, there is one heart and one lung for each baby," the PHC official said.

PHC experts are set to perform more medical tests to determine the functionality of the other organs of the conjoined twins.

Dr. Torres said the newborns were placed in the Intensive Care Unit of the PHC and they are also under antibiotics for neonatal pneumonia.

"They are really isolated because we do not want to lose the baby."