Surgeons at All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) Delhi have managed to perform rare surgery removing an extra pair of legs from an individual body. A boy from Uanno in Uttar Pradesh lived 17 years of his life with an unwanted extra pair of limbs that belonged to his underdeveloped twin. These legs hung out of his torso and were remnants of his parasitic twins. After this ‘rarest of rare’ surgery, the boy will get another chance to live the way he always wanted to.
Miracle by AIIMS Doctors
According to Dr Asuri Krishnan, an additional professor of surgery who led the specialist team and conducted the 2-and-a-half-hour surgery, this was a very rare case since only 40 such cases are reported globally.
Sometimes, during the gestational development of a twin pair, one twin doesn’t fully develop leading to an asymmetrical or parasitic twin. In this case, one twin (the autosite) is more developed than the other (parasite) and depends on the autosite for survival with partially developed body parts. In the case of the 17-year-old boy, only the lower limbs, the buttocks and the external genitalia of the twins were formed and were attached to his abdomen.
Even though the boy, who dropped out of school in class eight, will not be able to get his childhood. He now has plans to join the school and continue his education as he wanted to.
