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Dr Andrew Greensmith - Source: Close Up -
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Conjoined twins Trishna and Krishna are likely to greet the day separately for the first time in their short lives.
Mammoth surgery to separate the three-year-old pair continued at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital overnight and was expected to be complete by the early hours of Tuesday.
The hospital is yet to issue a fresh update on the progress of the pair, who are joined at the head and are being separated by a team of 16 medical experts.
The operation, one of the most complex and dangerous in the world, began as scheduled at 8.30am (AEDT) on Monday.
After several hours of positioning tubes to ensure there was no pressure on the eyes, surgeons made their first cut about 10am.
By 9pm on Monday, the girls were still hours from being separated.
The director of anaesthesia and pain management at the Royal Children's Hospital, Dr Ian McKenzie, said the girls and the surgical team were doing well.
"It's just going absolutely according to plan at the moment," McKenzie told reporters.
"We really couldn't be happier."
Medical staff were late on Monday night working on the delicate task of separating the girls' two brains.
Then, the final piece of shared skull would be removed to allow cranio-plastic surgeons to reconstruct the girls' skulls using a combination of their own skin, bone grafts and artificial materials,
McKenzie said Krishna suffered some low blood pressure during the surgery, which caused problems with her kidneys, but her circulation had improved.
It was expected the separation and reconstructive surgery would be completed by 3am, he said.
Friends, supporters and well-wishers remain at the Mary MacKillop Heritage Centre in East Melbourne for an all-night prayer vigil for the twins.
The groundbreaking bid to save the girls comes two years after the orphans arrived in Australia through Moira Kelly's Children First Foundation.
Earlier on Monday, the head of surgery at the hospital, Leo Donnan, said the chances of the twins pulling through successfully were still only 25%.
It may also be weeks before the girls are given the all-clear
but the first couple of days after the surgery is completed will be
crucial, he said.
Watch the Close Up interview with Dr Andrew Greensmith, one of the
surgeons involved.
