Emily Brown
Doctors in India were forced to rely on 'intuition and skill' to perform surgery on a teenager who'd been living with a rare parasitic twin attached to his abdomen for 17 years.
A parasitic twin is similar to a conjoined twin, however it occurs when one fetus stops developing in the womb.
During this process, the fetus that stops developing remains attached to its twin, earning it the name of a 'parasitic' twin. Meanwhile, the other twin continues to develop and is usually born with the limbs and organs of their twin still attached to their body.
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The condition only affects less than one in 1 million births worldwide, and one of those births was the teen from Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, India.
For years, the teen lived with two fully formed legs, buttocks and external genitalia, which weighed nearly 15kg, attached to his body. The limbs protruded from his abdomen, and it was determined they could feel pain, touch and even change in temperature.
In an interview with The Indian Express newspaper, the teen said he 'couldn't travel anywhere' without facing stares and jokes from members of the public; reactions that took a toll on his mental health.
He dropped out of school in the eighth grade, and it wasn't until he reached 17 years old that he underwent surgery to remove the additional extremities.
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The procedure was conducted by a team of specialists led by Dr Asuri Krishna, but the doctor admitted there was insufficient medical literature available to help guide the team.
Speaking to BBC News, Dr Krishna explained: "Only 40-50 cases of parasitic twins have been documented in world medical literature and, in those cases, the surgery had been attempted on children."
The team were forced to rely on their 'intuition, skill and knowledge' to perform the surgery, which began with the doctors finding out exactly how interconnected the teen and his twin were.
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Scans revealed the extra limbs were being supplied blood through a vessel in the teen's chest, but there 'wasn't much connection with other main organs like the liver or kidneys'.
The teen then underwent two stages of surgery - one to remove the limbs, and one to remove a cystic mass which had formed around surrounding organs.
The procedure took two-and-a-half hours, during which the medics separated 'a mesh of shared blood vessels, nerves and tissues'.
"Care had to be taken to see that none of the host's organs or tissues were damaged," Dr Krishna explained.
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Four days after he was admitted, the teen was discharged with no complications from the surgery.
Now, he hopes to live an active life including going back to his studies, and getting a job.
"A new world has opened up to me," he said.