India: Eight-limb girl leaves hospital after surgery

A two-year-old girl who was born with four arms and four legs left a hospital in southern India today little more than a month after surgeons successfully removed her extra limbs.

The surgeon who led more than 30 doctors in the marathon surgery said Lakshmi was making good progress and should be mobile soon.

“Lakshmi is fine and stable,” chief surgeon Dr Sharan Patil said. “She should face no problem in walking.”

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

A team of more than 30 surgeons performed a 24-hour operation on November 7 at the Sparsh hospital in Bangalore, the capital of southern Karnataka state. They removed the extra limbs, transplanted a kidney from the twin and reconstructed Lakshmi’s pelvic area.

“Lakshmi is a hero,” Dr Patil said.

“Lakshmi, who never turned (over) earlier, started turning after the surgery. She was even able to stand for 10 minutes on the bed holding the window grill, which is remarkable,” the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Dr Patil as saying.

Lakshmi’s parents said they were taking her back to their rural village in eastern Bihar state where she had been revered by some as an incarnation of the four-armed Hindu goddess she was named after.