A 45-day-old infant born with three legs was operated upon in Niloufer Hospital here on Friday.
The baby boy was born to a family of labourers in Nalgonda district (Ramanpet mandal). The two-hour-long surgery by a team of paediatricians removed the third leg, which was attached at the back.
The baby was evaluated with advanced imaging techniques like CT scan and found to have a rare lesion of an accessory limb arising from the left gluteal region. The team of paediatric surgeons was led by Dr A. Narendra Kumar.
“This is a very rare lesion. It is due to a defect in the neural tube formation in the foetal development stage. As this baby has no other major detectable congenital defects, he will have a normal life,” said Dr. K. Ramesh Reddy, Professor of Paediatric Surgery and the Superintendent in charge of Niloufer Hospital.
The hospital did the surgery for free. “Around 15 such cases have been operated upon at Niloufer Hospital in the last two decades. Such cases are rare and if operated on in a corporate hospital may cost between 1.5 to 2 lakh, but here the surgery was done free of cost,” added Dr Reddy.