By Amanda Williams
A baby boy born with eight limbs is said to be recovering well after doctors removed his ‘parasitic twin’.
Three-month old baby Paul Mukisa was born with four legs and four arms in Nabigingo, a small village in eastern Uganda.
Parents Margaret Awino and Boniface Okongo rushed the child to a nearby district hospital but were told there was nothing medics could do.
Three-month old baby Paul Mukisa was born with four legs and four arms in Nabigingo, a small village in eastern Uganda
They were then referred to Mulago Hospital in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, where a team of surgeons led by Dr John Sekabira, a consultant Paediatric surgeon, assessed the little boy and discovered that not only did he have four extra limbs and what appeared to be an extra chest, but that his heart and the liver were on the wrong sides.
Doctors also discovered that the parasitic twin shared part of the boy’s pelvic bone.
Surgeons then discharged the baby for three months, allowing him to grow large enough for them to safely operate on him.
On August 18, three surgeons performed on Pail at the Ugandan hospital. Over three hours they carefully separated parts of the parasitic twin from his body.
Dr Nasser Kakembo, one of the surgeons who carried out the operation, told CNN: ‘The baby was given general anesthesia and the torso and trunk of the parasitic twin — which had two arms but no head or heart — was detached from the host baby.
A team of surgeons led by Dr John Sekabira, a consultant Paediatric surgeon, assessed the little boy and discovered that not only did he have four extra limbs and what appeared to be an extra chest, but that his heart and the liver were on the wrong sides
On August 18, three surgeons performed on Pail at the Ugandan hospital. Over three hours they carefully separated parts of the parasitic twin from his body
‘Then we also detached the lower limbs of the parasitic twin from the host, which included disarticulating the right and left lower limbs as they were attached by joints. We controlled the bleeding and fashioned skin flaps to close the resulting wound.
He said there was only minor blood loss and no post-operation complications.
Now, three weeks after surgery the baby looks set to make a full recovery and is now breastfeeding from his mother.
Earlier this year doctors successfully removed a baby’s extra limbs after it was born with four hands and four feet at a hospital in China’s southern Guangdong province.
The 13-day-old boy, from Huizhou, was born joined to a headless parasitic twin joined at the torso on April 2.
Now, three weeks after surgery at Mulago Hospital the baby looks set to make a full recovery and is now breastfeeding from his mother
An an eight-limbed girl, Lakshmi Tatma, made headlines when she underwent a similar separation surgery from a parasitic twin in 2007.
Parasitic twins are extremely rare.
Identical twins form when a single egg splits during fertilisation – as opposed to two eggs both being fertilised.
Conjoined twins form when a split egg fails to fully separate. A ‘parasite’ conjoined twin can survive but not when one absorbs the other.
In 2012 surgeons in Peru operated on a three year old boy to remove a 9in-long parasitic twin weighing a pound and a half.
In 2008 doctors had to remove a 2in embryo from the body of a nine-year-old girl in Greece.
The brain, lungs and heart are some of the last parts of the body to develop. Removing a parasitic twin is usually easier than attempting to separate conjoined twins.
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