Girl leaves intensive care after operation to remove extra limbs
The Indian girl born with four arms and legs made her first public appearance today since massive surgery to remove the extra limbs.
Swathed in blankets and lying on her father’s lap, two-year-old Lakshmi looked healthy and alert.
She had both of her legs in casts while her arms were free.
Lakshmi’s doctors were encouraged by her progress and said she was responding well enough to treatment to leave the hospital’s intensive care unit.
“She is coping very well and she is stable,” said chief surgeon Dr Sharan Patil. “Lakshmi is safe at the moment.”
Lakshmi, from a remote village and named after the four-armed Indian deity, was born joined at the pelvis to a “parasitic twin” that stopped developing in her mother’s womb. The surviving foetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped twin.
A team of more than 30 surgeons finished a 24-hour operation last Wednesday at a hospital in the southern city of Bangalore. They removed the extra limbs, transplanted a kidney from the twin and reconstructed Lakshmi’s pelvic area.
Lakshmi has begun eating solid food again and has been off her respirator since Friday, Dr Patil said.
But despite her swift progress, he warned that Lakshmi still had a long way to go toward a full recovery.
“We still have things to do, but so far, so good,” he said.
Lakshmi will need further treatment and possible surgery for clubbed feet before she will be able to walk.
Children born with deformities in rural India, like the remote village in the northern state of Bihar where Lakshmi comes from, are often viewed as reincarnated gods.
