A baby in India is recovering after having surgery on Monday to remove an extra head that was attached to its stomach.
The baby girl was born with the head of a parasitic twin attached to her stomach at a government-operated hospital on May 13, Cover Asia Press reported. The head was fully formed, with its neck attached to the baby's abdomen.
With her life in danger, the baby was taken to a hospital in northern India to have the extra head removed. Doctors at JK Lone Hospital in Jaipur were able to successfully detach the head after a 90-minute surgery.
"It was a case of hetropahus twin, but we have successfully detached the head that was attached to the anterior abdominal wall," pediatric surgeon Dr. Chetan Sharma, who performed the operation, told Cover Asia Press.
"Blood from the baby's chest and abdomen was feeding the head. We managed to reconstruct the abdominal wall," the doctor said.
The 4-pound, 8-ounce girl, who has no name yet, is expected to go through another surgery to reconstruct her abdominal wall in a little over a month. Afterwards "she will then be a completely healthy child with no medical complications in the future," Sherma said.
The baby's parents, Amlekha and Ramjilal Bairva, praised the doctors for saving their daughter's life.
"I am very happy and thankful to the doctors and God for my daughter's successful surgery," Ramjilal Bairva, 29, told Cover Asia Press. "I could not hold my baby before, but now I will be able to cuddle her.
"She is very beautiful and I will make sure that she faces no problem in the future."
Parasitic twins occur when one twin is born with a smaller, less developed one attached.
The anomaly begins in the uterus when a twin embryo fails to fully separate, leaving one embryo to dominate the other, Cover Asia Press reported.
