40-hour surgery begins in India to remove parasitic twin

Nov 6, 2007, 10:18 GMT

New Delhi - Surgeons in the southern Indian city of Bangalore began a 40-hour surgery Tuesday, hoping to give a 2-year-old girl born with eight limbs a new lease on life.

Lakshmi Tatma has a rare parasitic twin. She has one head but two pairs of arms and legs that make it impossible for her to stand or walk, said Mamatha Patil, coordinator of the Sparsh Foundation, a charity connected to Bangalore's Sparsh Hospital that is funding the surgery.

The child was named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth by her poor parents, Shambhu and Poonam, who both go by one name and come from the northern state of Bihar bordering Nepal.

They had initially taken their daughter to a hospital in New Delhi, but when they were approached by circus owners who wanted to buy Lakshmi, they returned to their village.

'The parents said they loved their daughter and did not want her turned into a freak show and brought her back to the village where they tried to keep her away from prying eyes,' Patil said.

'Laksmi has a very rare condition called ischiopagus, which occurs in less than 2 per cent of conjoined twins,' said Patil, who is a also a surgeon. 'The twin embryo stops developing in the mother's womb, and one foetus develops at the expense of the other.'

Lakshmi's twin is headless and joined to her at the girl's pelvis

Sharan Patil, a paediatric surgeon at Sparsh Hospital, is leading a team of 30 doctors in a complex surgery to separate Lakshmi's limbs, which they estimate would take 40 hours.

Seven hours into the surgery, Lakshmi was doing well.

'Everything is fine,' Mamatha Patil said. 'The child is stable.'