Doctors say surgery on Indian twin successful

Nov 7, 2007, 10:14 GMT

New Delhi - Surgeons in the southern Indian city of Bangalore said Wednesday they had successfully completed a surgery to separate extra limbs from a 2-year-old girl born with two pairs of arms and legs.

'The surgery took 27 hours. The girl is now in the intensive care unit where she will be monitored closely. She is stable but one cannot say anything for the next 72 hours,' Ramesh Karmegam of Sparsh Hospital, where the surgery took place, said.

He said a team of 30 doctors from various disciplines had been involved in the 27-hour operation that began Tuesday morning and ended Wednesday.

'I am optimistic about the child's survival,' Sharan Patil, who led the team of surgeons, said at a televised press briefing. He said the girl's spinal column and kidney had been separated from her parasitic twin along with her limbs.

Lakshmi Tatma was born with a parasitic twin - she had one head but an extra pair of arms and legs joined to her torso that made it impossible for her to stand or walk. Doctors at Sparsh are hoping their surgery will give her a new lease of life.

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. The child was revered in her village as an incaranation of the goddess, reports said.

The poor couple had initially taken Lakshmi to a hospital in New Delhi, but when they were approached by circus owners who wanted to buy Lakshmi, they returned to their village, determined not to turn their daughter into a freak show.

Lakshmi had a very rare condition called ischiopagus, which occurs in less than 2 per cent of conjoined twins, Mamatha Patil, coodinator for Sparsh Foundation, a charitable trust attached to the hospital said earlier. 'The twin embryo stops developing in the mother's womb, and one foetus develops at the expense of the other.'

   Sparsh Foundation would be paying all the costs of the surgery and Lakshmi would be kept at the hospital for as long as required, Patil said.