'Mermaid' gets second op
2006-09-07 14:39
Lima, Peru - A medical team of eight specialists will perform a second operation on Thursday on Peru's "miracle baby" to fully separate her legs, her lead physician Dr Luis Rubio said.
Milagros Cerron, whose first name means "miracles" in Spanish, was born with a rare congenital defect known as sirenomelia, or "mermaid syndrome", which left her legs connected from her heels to her groin.
In June 2005 doctors successfully performed risky surgery to separate her legs to above her knees.
Rubio said the surgeons will operate on Milagros, now two years and four months old, to separate the remaining 10 centimetres of fused tissue just below the groin.
"With this operation we hope to fully conclude the separation of her lower limbs," he said. "I expect to be walking the streets of Lima holding her hand in December, which would be a Christmas gift for her family."
He said Milagros, affectionately called "the little mermaid" by Peruvians, has developed the ability to stand alone without help and take small assisted steps.
Wearing a red headband, red pants and a red T-shirt, she took shuffling steps holding onto Rubio's hand and blew kisses to photographers.
Born with her legs fused to the ankles and her feet splayed, Milagros looked like one of the mythical mermaids before her operation.
Rubio has said Tiffany Yorks, a 17-year-old American, was the only other person known to have undergone successful surgery to correct the rare congenital defect, which occurs in one out of every 70 000 births and is almost always fatal within days of birth.
Rubio said the operation to fully separate her legs would take between two and two and a half hours and was scheduled to begin early on Thursday morning.
"It's less risky than the first operation but there is an artery shared" by her two legs that the surgeons must deal with, he said.
The team of eight physicians - including plastic surgeons, vascular specialists, gynaecologists and paediatric urologists - will use the operation to study problems in her urinary, digestive and genital systems that need to be treated in future surgery, he said.
Rubio said that he calculates she will need at least 16 more operations in the next 10 years to reconstruct and repair her digestive, urinary and sexual organs.
He said he was happy to report that her own body had corrected one problem - a lack of correctly formed sockets for her hip bones that in December appeared to be one of the biggest challenges facing surgeons.
Her growing body gradually formed the sockets, without which she would have been unable to maintain stability when standing up, Rubio said.
- AP