US surgeon hopeful of separating Indian twins

American neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson of Johns Hopkins Children's Centre in Baltimore, who was flown in to separate the conjoined Indian twins Farah and Saba, has said that if everything went the way they had planned, the twins were expected to survive.

Carson will lead the medical team of 20 doctors at Indraprastha Apollo hospital in New Delhi to perform the first operation of its kind in India, a press release from Johns Hopkins said on Friday.

The US surgeon was flown in after Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who read about the twins in a newspaper, agreed to pay for the operation, the release said.

The 10-year-old girls conjoined at the head share a blood drainage vessel in the brain - a concern for doctors.

They have never been able to sleep apart, sit upright or see each other face to face.

The release quoted the surgeon as saying that at each stage of the operation there was a 20 per cent chance of failure.

Another major problem is that Farah has two kidneys and Saba has none.