Americans Ronnie and Donnie are the oldest Siamese brothers in the world. They will celebrate their 63th birthday in October, thus breaking the record for the Bunker twins to whom we owe the expression of “Siamese brothers”.
On Saturday July 5, two brothers from Ohio named Donnie and Ronnie Galyon became the oldest fused twins in the world. At 62 years and 8 months, they are beyond the age of the famous Thai brothers Chang and Eng Bunker (May 1811-January 1874). The latter, who shared a liver and a sternum, left Siam (the old name of Thailand) in the 1850s for Paris in the hope of resorting to separation surgery. The intervention, too sophisticated for the time, did not take place, but the history of the Bunkers gave rise to the expression “Siamese brothers”.
This phenomenon, due to a monoamniotic monochorial twin pregnancy (a single placenta and a single amniotic pocket) is extremely rare. It represents one in 10,000 monozygotic pregnancies (twins from the same egg). In addition, the life expectancy for Siamese brothers or sisters is often low, especially when they share organs. However, the Galyon brothers, linked by the abdomen, are in good health. They have two distinct stomachs and two hearts but share a digestive system, anus and a penis.
If this scenario is rare, the Galyons are not the only twins to have lived so long since the famous Bunker brothers: the Italian Siamese Giacomo and Giovanni Tocci lived until the age of 63 (1877- 1940) and appear in the Guinness World Records. But they will no doubt have to give way to Donnie and Ronnie, who are preparing to celebrate their 63rd birthday in October.
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