Surgery to remove Indian girl's extra limbs a success

0 Comments | AFP, November, 2007

BANGALORE, India (AFP) — Indian surgeons said Wednesday they had successfully removed the extra limbs from a two-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs, in a gruelling operation that lasted more than a day.

The girl, named Lakshmi after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, was born fused at the pelvis to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in the womb.

She had absorbed the organs and body parts of the undeveloped foetus, a condition that occurs once in 50,000 conjoined twin births, requiring the rare, risky operation -- the first of its kind performed in India.

After more than 24 hours of surgery, Lakshmi was breathing Wednesday with the aid of a ventilator and under observation at the intensive care unit of Bangalore's Sparsh Hospital....