A
toddler born with three legs — because body parts of a twin had grown inside
her — was returning home to Bangladesh Friday after complex and rare surgery in
Australia enabled her to walk and run, her doctor said.
Three-year-old
Choity Khatun was given little prospect of survival until she was brought to
Melbourne last year by Australian charity Children First Foundation.
A
team of surgeons spent several months mapping out a procedure to reconstruct
her anatomy.
“A twin had grown out of her pelvis but the twin was only
part of a twin… The problem is there’s no rulebook for this because she’s a
very unique individual so you have to try and work out what was where,” Chris
Kimber, the paediatric surgery head at Monash Children’s Hospital, told AFP.
The
surgery, which Kimber said was “extremely rare”, was finally carried out in
November and involved eight doctors who specialise in genital and pelvic
reconstructions working on the girl for eight hours.
“We
spent three or four months thinking about it, presenting it to other doctors,
getting ideas from around the world, and then based on lots of world opinion,
we were able to come up with something that clearly works,” he added.
The
little girl is also partially blind, but an ophthalmologist’s examination at
the hospital found her sight could not be improved.
But
she has sufficient sight to now walk and run like other children, to the
delight of her 22-year-old mother.
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