So tiny that many doctors would have let the baby die: meet Melinda Star Guido, 9.5 ounces at birth "So we said, 'OK, we'll try,'" Dr Ramanathan explained. He hailed her release as a rare feat. The hospital has never succeeded in saving a baby weighing less than 14oz, said Dr Ramanathan, who has previously stated that doctors nationwide generally leave such premature infants to die. "In my 30 years here this is the first time it ever happened," he said as Melinda was released from hospital on Friday. We have reached a milestone by being able to see Melinda go home. We are hopeful to see many more milestones accomplished in Melinda's development as we follow her care over the next six years," he said. Measured by birth weight, Melinda is the second smallest baby in the US - by a 0.3oz difference - and the third smallest in the world to survive, according to the Global Birth Registry. Medical advances and technological developments have allowed doctors to increase the survival rate for babies born weighing three pounds or less, from 24 per cent to 41 per cent over the last decade The decision to save Melinda triggered a debate among medical ethicists, based on questions over the long-term quality of life of such infants. A study published in the journal Pediatrics in 2010 found that many survivors have continuing health and learning issues, most remain short and underweight for their age, and medical complications can be enduring. There are some rare success stories. The world's tiniest survivor, Rumaisa Rahmam, born in Chicago in 2004 weighing just 9.2oz after 26 weeks gestation, is now a healthy seven-year-old. Another who weighed 9.9oz at birth is now a 22-year-old honors student studying psychology. Newborn twins in New York were also being feted as medical miracles yesterday after they were born at just 25 weeks gestation to a mother with two uteruses. Alison Camp, who has a rare condition called Uterus Didelphys, delivered twins Carter and Griffin - one from each uterus - on October 8 at Women and Children's Hospital in Buffalo, doctors revealed. Both weighed less than 1.5lbs at birth and could not breathe on their own, needed blood transfusions and had broken ribs, among other complications. Carter was discharged from hospital on Jan 13, weighing seven pounds, the hospital announced, while Griffin remains in intensive care and may join his brother next week. There are only around 75 recorded cases in the world of successful 'side-by-side' pregnancies. Mrs Camp has two other children born three years apart, one from each uterus, and said that the side-by-side pregnancy had come as a shock. "We were joking around with my doctor that on 'Grey's Anatomy' there was a woman who had a baby in each uterus and how that could happen to me," she said. We thought it was hilarious. ... We joked because it was on TV, not because it was ever a possibility.