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Re: Indian Girl Born With 8 Limbs Undergoes Risky Surgery
Doctors began operating Tuesday on a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs in an extensive surgery that they hope will leave the girl with a normal body, a hospital official said.
The girl named Lakshmi is joined to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in the mother's womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped fetus.
A team of 30 doctors was removing the extra limbs and organs. They have separated the fused spines and the next step will be to separate the extra limbs and then the rest of the "parasite," said Dr. Sharan Patil, the orthopedic surgeon leading the operation.
"As of now, the child has been responding very well," Patil said several hours into the operation.
Lakshmi is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, and some in her village in the northern state of Bihar revere her.
"Everybody considers her a goddess at our village," said her father, Shambhu, who goes by one name. "All this expenditure has happened to make her normal. So far, everything is fine."
Others sought to make money from Lakshmi. Her parents kept her in hiding after a circus apparently tried to buy the girl, they said.
The complications for Lakshmi's surgery are myriad: The two spines are merged, she has four kidneys, entangled nerves, two stomach cavities and two chest cavities. She cannot stand up or walk.
"It's a big team effort of a lot of skilled surgeons who will be putting their heart and soul into solving the problem of Lakshmi," Patil said earlier in the day. "It's going to take many, many hours on a continuous basis to operate on the baby. So, these issues definitely make it complex."
Patil put the risk of losing Lakshmi between 20 and 25 percent.
Doctors at Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore, where the girl is undergoing surgery, said she is popular among the staff and patients.
"She's a very cute girl," Dr. Patil Mamatha said. "She's very playful and gets along well with others."
The hospital's foundation is paying for the operation because the girl's family could not afford the medical bills, Mamatha said.
The couple, who earn just $1 a day as casual laborers, were keen for her to have the operation but were unable to pay for the rare procedure, which has never before been performed in India.
Many villagers, however, remain opposed to surgery and are planning to erect a temple to Lakshmi, who they still revere as sacred.
After Patil visited the girl in her village from Narayana Health City hospital in Bangalore, the hospital's foundation agreed to fund the $200,000 operation.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,308439,00.html
follow the link for pictures
- DoubleTalkingJive
- Rep: 74
Re: Indian Girl Born With 8 Limbs Undergoes Risky Surgery
She is a cute girl awww I hope she makes it through all the way and has a normal life.
Amazing how this stuff happens and sad too for the surviving child but at least they can do something about it.
- the_real_jessica
- Rep: 22
Re: Indian Girl Born With 8 Limbs Undergoes Risky Surgery
First pictures of eight-limbed baby back in arms of her mother after 'amazing' recovery from surgery
Last updated at 15:52pm on 13th November 2007
Comments
A two-year-old Indian girl born with eight limbs has astonished doctors with a remarkable recovery following major surgery.
Lakshmi Tatma was born with four legs and four arms - but has had them removed in a gruelling operation.
She was today removed from intensive care following a procedure which removed her headless 'parasitic twin' a week ago, and was reunited with her parents.
Without the operation to remove her twin, who was fused at the pelvis, the toddler - hailed as the reincarnation of the Hindu goddess Vishnu - was unlikely to live beyond her early teens, medics said.
Doctors at the Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore, where Laskhmi underwent the 27-hour operation, admitted they were amazed at her quick recovery.
"She is alert, eating solid food and on nothing stronger than paracetemol," said Dr Sharan Patil, who led the operation.
"She has well and truly passed the danger stage and is on course to make a full recovery. There may be further operations down the line, to correct her club feet, but so far so good. She is making remarkable progress."
In the first pictures since she regained consciousness five days ago, Lakshmi can be seen happily smiling with her mother Poonam, father Shambu and older brother Mithilesh, four.
Doctors predict she could be released from hospital shortly after Christmas.
"Lakshmi is behaving exactly like her old self, it's amazing," said Poonam.
"She remembers exactly who she likes and dislikes. Some people have come in her room and she points and screams at them until they leave.
"But she is smiling again and happy to see those she likes.
"She has developed a taste for the hospital canteen's raspberry milkshake, which we resorted to when she refused normal milk, but other than that she is the same as before only with two legs."
"She has a very sweet tooth, so we have been treating her a little. She's been bought a beautiful pink dress for the first time in her life she can fit in normal clothes."
Lakshmi was born with eight limbs in Rampur Kodar Katti, a remote village without electricity or water in the crime-ridden state of Bihar, 20 miles from India's border with Nepal.
Her poverty-stricken parents, who earn less than 50p a day as casual labourers, were turned away from every government hospital they visited for help.
Until the intervention of Dr Patil, who visited Bihar in January to asses whether an operation was viable, Lakshmi had never received any medical attention.
"Her recovery is God's will, just as it was God's will that she was born like that in the first place," said her father Sahmbu, "but what the doctor's have done is like a miracle.
"The doctors are like gods - they can make the living dead and the dead living. They have made Lakshmi a normal little girl. It was my dream and it has come true."
Speaking at a press conference to declare the operation a complete success, Dr Patil said: "All the surgeons' lives have been enriched by our contact with Laskhmi and I really feel it has been our privilege.
"By no means are we completely done with Lakshmi, but so far so good. She has a plaster cast on both legs at the moment to hold her feet in a steady position and to keep her wounds together.
"Her wounds are both raw and extensive, so that is something we are paying great attention to at the moment. Her recovery from the operation overall has been excellent."
