Doctors begin surgery on 'mermaid baby'

Surgeons began a delicate operation on Peru’s bright-eyed “little mermaid” today – a baby girl born with legs fused from her thighs to her ankles.

The surgery is the first of three operations planned to repair her rare birth defect.

Reporters from all over the world assembled on a third-floor mezzanine at Solidarity Hospital in Lima to watch television monitors as the surgery began in a small operating room on the first floor.

Hours before the surgery, 13-month-old Milagros Cerron giggled and played in her hospital bed while Dr Luis Rubio, leader of the team of 11 surgeons performing the operation, looked on.

He said Milagros was in prime condition for the surgery, which was expected to last four to six hours.

Rubio said he was “tremendously optimistic” that the operation would be successful.

“Today is the big day awaited by the entire world, by her parents, by her and by us. We have prepared an entire hospital for her,” Rubio said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Milagros’ father, Ricardo Cerron, 24, who was sitting with reporters watching the monitors, broke into tears as Rubio made the first incision. The baby’s mother, Sara Arauco, 19, put her hand to her mouth as the surgery began. A nurse standing behind her chair put her hands on her shoulders.

Milagros, whose name means “miracles” in Spanish, was born with a rare congenital defect known as sirenomelia, or ”mermaid syndrome”, which occurs in one out of every 70,000 births. Her legs are seamlessly fused all the way to her heels.

There are only three known cases of children born with the affliction alive in the world today, according to Rubio.

The 11 doctors who performed the operation to begin separation of her legs included plastic surgeons, paediatricians and heart specialists.

Rubio said the medical team decided to operate at night because the doctors wanted to perform the surgery when Solidarity Hospital, a public facility that serves 1,500 people daily, would be at its quietest.

The objective of the first operation is to separate the child’s legs from the heels up to the knees. The medical team will then examine the knee ligaments to prepare for the next operation, which Rubio said would take place in several months.

Probably the greatest challenge today was how to divide a major artery that crosses from one leg to the other, he said. Preliminary studies indicated it would not be necessary to perform a bypass of the artery but the team was ready to do so if required, he added.

Milagros weighs 14.75lbs and measures 25ins long, about the size and weight of a normal six-month-old child.

Rubio said Milagros had suffered frequent urinary infections because her urinary tract, anus and genitals end in the same opening, almost like a “sewer”.

But her intellectual development had been remarkable, he said, as Milagros smiled, trying to grab a laser light Rubio used to show how her legs were connected by the same sheath of skin.

“She has extraordinary psycho-mental development. She communicates well with her surroundings. She babbles words that correspond to her age,” he said, picking up Milagros and holding her over his head as she giggled.

In the last three months, doctors have inserted silicone bags filled with saline solution to stretch the skin so it will be able to cover her legs once they are cut apart.

Milagros has a deformed left kidney and a very small right one located very low in her body.

Rubio said Milagros would need up to 15 years of corrective surgeries to reconstruct and repair her sexual, digestive and other internal organs.

Her father made an eight-hour bus ride to Lima from a village high in the Andes to get Milagros help shortly after she was born on April 27, 2004.

“I’m a bit excited and also a little pained because of what my daughter is going through,” Ricardo Cerron told The Associated Press only hours before the operation. “But I have faith in the doctors. I have faith in God. I am putting everything in God’s hands.”