India: Twin born with four arms and four legs
A two-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs will undergo extensive surgery in India today, according to media reports.
The girl is joined to a “parasitic twin” who stopped developing in the mother’s womb. The surviving foetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped foetus.
The rare condition is called isciopagus.
The girl, Lakshmi, is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, and some in her poor village in the northern state of Bihar revere her as a goddess.
Others sought to make money from her, however, and after she was born, her parents, Shambhu and Poonam, hid her after a circus apparently tried to buy the girl, according to a report in the Hindustan Times.
The members of the family only go by their first names. Paediatric surgeon Dr Sharan Patil from Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore heard of the girl and offered to operate for free.
A team of 30 doctors will participate in the surgery. Isciopagus twins are joined at the lower chest or abdomen down to the pelvis.
The complications for Lakshmi’s surgery are myriad: the two spines are merged, the girl has four kidneys, entangled nerves, two stomach cavities and two chest cavities. She cannot stand up or walk.
