A two-year-old Indian girl born with eight limbs is making a steady recovery after undergoing marathon surgery, but it was too soon to declare her out of danger, doctors said Saturday.
Lakshmi regained consciousness and was taken off a respirator on Friday, two days after the 27-hour operation at Bangalore's Sparsh Hospital to remove the extra limbs.
Lakshmi, who was named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, has been in intensive care since the risky operation, the first of its kind to be performed in India.
Doctors described her condition as "stable."
"She is making steady improvement but nothing can be said right now" about whether she is out of danger, said hospital coordinator Mamatha Patil.
"We will keep her under observation in the ICU (intensive care unit) for more time."
The child regained consciousness on Friday as India celebrated Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights and fireworks in which the devout worship the goddess Lakshmi.
She was born fused at the pelvis to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in the womb. She had absorbed the organs and body parts of the other foetus, a condition that occurs once in 50,000 conjoined twin births.
Lakshmi woke up in cheerful mood Friday, recognized her parents and moved her fingers and toes slowly, doctors said.
The parents, from a remote district in poverty-hit eastern Bihar state, saw her twice Friday and were delighted by her progress, doctors said.
"We called out to her by her name and she responded. She even cried that she wanted to come with us when we were leaving," said Lakshmi's father Shambhu, a manual labourer who goes by one name.
"I have just these doctors to thank for this miracle," the Press Trust of India quoted him as saying.
"They say she is going to be back to normal, I believe them. It is a debt I could never repay."
Doctors said the girl would have been unlikely to live into her teens with her condition, and gave the surgery an 80 percent chance of success.
Once the child is out of danger, doctors plan a rehabilitation programme including physiotherapy to strengthen her legs and teach her how to walk.
"We have seen many miracles and hope this one (of her walking) will happen soon," said Sharan Patil who headed the 36-member operating team that included surgeons with a range of specializations from paediatrics to plastic surgery.
"She has withstood the surgery well," he added.
But "some of her parameters still have to stabilise. It might take some time," Patil said.
Lakshmi was brought to Bangalore for the surgery by her father and mother Poonam, now pregnant for a third time.
A New Delhi hospital had earlier refused to perform the operation, saying the case was too complex and the cost prohibitive.
The surgery, which cost 2.4 million rupees (60,000 dollars), was performed free by the Bangalore hospital.
Here's the link to where I got this info!
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iZ7aQLMK3Z_ZAomUK0yn4Kx58VdQ
So here are some questions about this interesting topic.
1.-What are the effects of having surgery?
2.-What do you find most interesting about this article?
