Two Brazilian Siamese twins born bound by the skull have been successfully separated following multiple operations, the “most complex” intervention ever carried out for this kind of case, assured on Monday the medical team, who used the reality virtual to prepare it.

After spending most of their lives in a hospital in Rio de Janeiro (southeast Brazil) in a special bed, Arthur and Bernardo Lima, three and a half years old, can now look each other in the face after several marathon operations in early June.

Adriely Lima, their mother, cried with relief at the end of the separation: "We had been living in the hospital for four years," she said in a press release.

The separation was made possible with the help of the London-based charity Gemini Untwined, who described it as 'the most complex' ever, given that the brothers shared several vital blood vessels.

"It was without a doubt the most complex operation of my career," added neurosurgeon Gabriel Mufarrej, from the Paulo Niemeyer Brain Institute (IECPN), the hospital where the operation took place. .

“At the base, nobody thought they were going to survive. It is already historic that the two could be saved,” he insisted, adding that the twins were still in the hospital where “a long convalescence” awaits them. “We do not yet know how much they will be able to live a normal life”, he however tempered.

In total, the twins underwent nine surgeries, including one at 1 p.m. on June 7 and another at 11 p.m. two days later.

To prepare them, the hundred or so members of the medical team used an ultra-modern virtual reality system to reconstruct the anatomy of the Siamese before operating on them.

“It looks like space-age stuff,” described British neurosurgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani, of Gemini Untwined.

"It's wonderful to be able to observe the anatomy and practice the operation beforehand without putting the lives of the children in danger (...) You can't imagine how reassuring it is for the surgeons", a- he told the PA news agency.