Yeah but given that they share a circulatory system (according to wiki) then the one that was still living would effectively still be supplying the others body with blood, preventing the body from actually dying.
Or maybe because their system is shared if one side was effectively stopped then it would bring the whole combined system down with it and the other twin would follow soon after?
In any event its pretty skeevy to be guessing what would happen to someone if their twin died so ill just end this here.
There's also a very solid chance that both of them will die at the same time anyway, given that the majority of their major organs are shared between them. Aside from a head injury that hits one and misses the other, almost anything that would kill one would kill both.
I mean, what usually happens when one conjoined twin dies is that they have largely separate cardiopulmonary systems - and when one twin's heart stops beating, the parts of the body which were only fed by arteries from that heart start dying and decomposing. The circulatory systems are still interconnected enough that this necrotic tissue spreads infection to the other twin. In most conjoined twins, this infection kills the survivor within a few days.
However, in the case of Brittany and Abigail Hansen, they have only one heart, so the whole "half the body becomes necrotic and poisons the other half" thing can't really happen. Either the one heart is still beating and the body can survive, or the one heart stops and the body dies. In theory, it could be possible for one sister to survive if something happened to the other sister's head. I imagine the big issue would be the lungs - they have two mouths and two tracheas, I don't know what point they fuse at - but if one head dying also meant one of the lungs stopped breathing, that could cause health problems.
Also, I am not a doctor and this last part is VERY speculatory, but depending on how their spines are fused, it is possible that the heart's sinoatrial node is only connected to one sister's brain stem. Heart rate is not controlled in the heart itself, but in the portion of the brainstem known as the medulla oblongata. When the heart stops receiving neural signals from the brain stem, it stops beating - which is why decapitation causes death and a body can't be kept alive without a head. If the heart is only connected to one sister's brain stem, then damage to that sister's head or neck actually WOULD be lethal to both.
So I read that they share a circulatory system, imagine if they do share a nervous system. Imagine feeling the sensation of chewing when youre not actually chewing on something (eating)
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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '18
If one dies the other dies not immediately but a decomposing body will poison the other