Surgery begins on girl born with eight limbs

DOCTORS began operating on Tuesday on a two-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs in an extensive surgery they hope will leave the girl with a normal body, a hospital official said.

The 40-hour procedure was expected to continue into this morning.

The girl, named Lakshmi, was joined to a “parasitic twin” that stopped developing in the mother’s womb. The surviving foetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped foetus.

A team of 30 doctors was removing the extra limbs and organs.

They have separated the fused spines and the next step will be to separate the extra limbs and then the rest of the “parasite”, said Dr Sharan Patil, the orthopaedic surgeon leading the operation.

“As of now, the child has been responding very well,” Dr Patil said last night.

Lakshmi is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, and some in her village in the northern state of Bihar revere her.

“Everybody considers her a goddess at our village,” said her father, Shambhu.

Others sought to make money from Lakshmi. Her parents kept her in hiding after a circus apparently tried to buy the girl, they said.

The complications for Lakshmi’s surgery are myriad: The two spines are merged, she has four kidneys, entangled nerves, two stomach cavities and two chest cavities. She cannot stand up or walk.

“It’s a big team effort of a lot of skilled surgeons who will be putting their heart and soul into solving the problem of Lakshmi,” Dr Patil said earlier in the day.

“It’s going to take many, many hours on a continuous basis to operate.”

Dr Patil put the risk of losing Lakshmi between 20% and 25%.

Doctors at Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore, where the girl is undergoing surgery, said she is popular among the staff and patients.

“She’s a very cute girl,” Dr Patil Mamatha said. “She’s very playful and gets along well with others.”

The hospital’s foundation is financing the operation as the girl’s family could not afford the medical bills.