Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad   

Partial twinning foxes doctors

T. Lalith Singh

Surgery to separate incomplete foetus from infant tomorrow

TWIN SURGERY: Niloufer Hospital Superintendent N.C.K. Reddy examining the newborn child in Hyderabad.

HYDERABAD: A very rare case of partial twinning where a two-day-old baby with a twin that failed to form and hanging from the lower part of his body, has been reported at the Niloufer Hospital for Women and Children.

Born to Sophia, a resident of Nalgonda town, the child was shifted here on Friday and the hospital is in the process of forming a medical team for a surgery to separate the incomplete foetus from the infant's body. The surgery has been scheduled for Tuesday.

The infant appears quite normal but for the excess growth clinging to its left buttock and the doctors could locate a semblance of an untimely aborted effort at forming head with hair, navel, brain matter and a bit of limbs in the attachment. "This appears to be a case of unexpected termination of foetus formation and had it survived, would possibly have shaped as a conjoined one," says N.C.K.Reddy, Niloufer Hospital Superintendent.

Seen as a case of twinning going awry, the 48-hour-old baby has been put under round-the-clock observation, while doctors began preparations for the excision. The infant weighs around 3.5 kg but the burden of his `incomplete twin' attached to him itself is more than half-a-kg.

Growth terminated

Dr.Reddy described it as a sort of `Pygopus,' which has twins usually joined back to back at the buttocks.

"The foetus clearly started to develop as a twin, but the growth got terminated early after fertilisation, ending up in the way it is now. I have never seen such abnormality in all these decades of my practice," he said.

The effort is on to assemble a right team for the surgery and the superintendent expressed confidence that the partial twinning would be successfully excised from the main baby.

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