Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Coping and support
By Mayo Clinic staffNothing is harder than for expectant parents to learn that their unborn child has a life-threatening condition. In the case of conjoined twins, this is doubly difficult — not just because there are two babies involved, but also because the children who survive face tremendous obstacles, and the parents must grapple with tremendous decisions.
Conjoined twins are rare, and few public resources exist specifically for conjoined twins or their families. But there are a number of organizations that support parents who have lost children or who have children with grave physical problems. Your medical team can put you in touch with some of these groups as well as with medical social workers and counselors.
- From 'monsters' to modern medical miracles: Selected moments in the history of conjoined twins from medieval to modern times. United States National Library of Medicine. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/conjoined/embryology.html. Accessed Sept. 2, 2008.
- Roque H, et al. Monoamniotic twin pregnancy. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Sept. 2, 2008.
- Stone JL, et al. The craniopagus malformation: Classification and implications for surgical separation. Brain. 2006;129(5):1084-1095.
- Spitz L, et al. Success rate for surgery of conjoined twins. The Lancet. 2000;356:1765.
- Wilcox DT, et al. Urological problems in conjoined twins. British Journal of Urology. 1998;81:905-910.
- Carnevale FC, et al. Importance of angiographic study in preoperative planning of conjoined twins: Case report. Clinics. 2006;61(2): 167-170.
- Pajkrt E, et al. First-trimester diagnosis of conjoined twins. Prenatal Diagnosis. 2005;25(9):820-826.
- Kaufman M. The embryology of conjoined twins. Child's Nervous System. International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery. 2004;20(8-9):508-525.
- Gilbert S. Types of conjoined twins. In: Gilbert S. Developmental Biology. 8th ed.
- Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates, Inc; 2006. http://8e.devbio.com/article.php?id=112&search=conjoined%20twins. Accessed Sept. 2, 2008.
