India Birth Defect (NSFW)

[JerryC]

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=3824671

By KASHIF MASOOD Associated Press Writer
BANGALORE, India Nov 6, 2007 (AP)

http://a.abcnews.com/images/Technology/ap_Laskshmi_071106_ms.jpg (Not for the faint hearted)

Doctors began operating Tuesday on a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs in an extensive surgery that they hope will leave the girl with a normal body, a hospital official said.

The girl named Lakshmi is joined to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in the mother's womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped fetus.

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 orthopedic surgeon leading the operation.

"As of now, the child has been responding very well," Patil said several hours into the operation.

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, who goes by one name. "All this expenditure has happened to make her normal. So far, everything is fine."

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," Patil said earlier in the day. "It's going to take many, many hours on a continuous basis to operate on the baby. So, these issues definitely make it complex."

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

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."

Didn't India have the baby born that looked like a half duck, platypus baby hybrid thing a year or so ago? Seriously wtf is with this region and birth defects?

[Insert shameless Goro or Shiva jokes here]

 

[Squall7]

Wow...

...Though pretty bad that a circus tried to buy her...

...and as for birth defects, a lot of places get them (think pretty much everywhere). I think it's just one of those things you cannot predict, but bearing in mind the size of India's population, the chances of it happening to someone from India rise quite a bit. Also bearing in mind that it was a case of a dead twin, which happens a lot, albeit mostly less developed twinning.

 

[JAKE196]

0_o thats pretty interesting.

 

[JerryC]

Yeah whats even worse is that she apparently has extra everything, 4 Kidneys, 2 abdominal cavities and whats most painful to fix; 2 spines.
Apparently twin embryo's that started out ok but the one didn't make it and somehow merged with the other, your typical conjoined twin in a sense.

They are going to do some major surgeries on her, the problem is that they have to figure out which muscles, organs, limbs, spine and whatnot are the dominant ones for her because apparently all of them are functioning somehow.

 

[surfinrach90]

Isn't she undergoing surgery like right now?

Apparently the first stage of it is going well. Uber complicated though. They have to replace her kidney with the one in the other body because hers isn't working. Oh and after everythings removed they then have to put her own legs back into place, because they sort of go the wrong way. =/

Poor kid.

Oh and here's an interesting picture for you:

 

[FRuMMaGe]

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=3824671



Didn't India have the baby born that looked like a half duck, platypus baby hybrid thing a year or so ago? Seriously wtf is with this region and birth defects?

[Insert shameless Goro or Shiva jokes here]

It's wierd how most of the more severe birth defects are from India. Maybe that's just an illusion though because there are far more many people there

 

[surfinrach90]

Yeah you could be right.

Mind you maybe the Indian media make a bigger fuss of it out there, making the news spread to the other countries.

 

[FRuMMaGe]

Actually I've thought about it now. It's probably due to the fact that most alot of India is relatively poor and the hospitals cannot detect/treat defects as quickly as the west.

 

[oxhaker]

no need for holoween costume
jk
but wtf do they do over their....so does she live twice then or wat ( as if she was shot in of the chests)

 

[FRuMMaGe]

no need for holoween costume
jk
but wtf do they do over their....so does she live twice then or wat ( as if she was shot in of the chests)

If you read the article, it says it is a parasitic embryo.

This basically means that they were twins, one of the fetuses died and was absorbed by the living one.

 

[ilikecookies]

Thats a pretty weird story. Your probably right. Lack of money and hospitals makes it hard to detected something like that.

 

[Byuakuya]

Yeah, I read about this as well, and I was shocked about the circus asking to buy her. I think the country itself has a large population, so it appears as if a lot of the defects originate from there, but I have noticed that most of these defects directly reflect the country's region (MEDC or LEDC). Most of these defects seem to occur in LEDCs, as a direct result of poor medical care and hygiene.
I hope the operation is successful.

 

[Squall7]

I hate to break it to you, but India is getting more and more wealthy.

Sure, there are plenty of people who are impoverished there, but that's true of literally anywhere. And I don't think it's wise to assume or even rely on our media to accurately portray life in India. Considering there's also plenty of Indian doctors coming into Britain, I would say that India probably isn't short of their own doctors to begin with. In essence, I think this is more a case of chance rather than economic consequences.

 

[vashivihan]

that is right. It is predicted that India will surpass US in terms of economy in few years. the reason is that the indian youth is more academically aware about their future whereas an american child would say" oh, ill get a job at some factory for 10 bucks an hour for rest of my life" i am not being racist but thats the truth.

 

[AndThen?]

Lack of money and hospitals makes it hard to detected something like that.

You hardly need a specialist to detect THAT, lol.

I don't believe it has anything to do with India, but if it did, it may have something to do with the extremely high amounts of water and air pollution, and the mass overpopulation of the country.

But yeah... I'd call this one a freak accident.