Doctors successfully removed the extra limb of the Indian girl born with THREE legs

February 17, 2016  21:29

A baby girl has been born with an extra leg sprouting from her back due to a rare condition which affects one in a million infants.

Two-year-old Varsha Sena, from Delhi, was born with two legs, and a third limb growing sideways out of her spine.

Varsha suffers from a rare condition called polymelia, which causes a person to be born with extra limbs, often arms or legs.

Doctors at the Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital, Delhi, were able to successfully amputate the unwanted third leg at the end of last month.

The lead surgeon, Dr Daljit Singh, said: 'The baby was suffering from polymelia.

'It is a condition in which is a person is born with more than four limbs. We have not seen such a case in the last fifty years.

'This was the first case of polymelia in which the spinal cord had developed into an additional limb.'

Varsha was born at Bara Hindu Rao Hospital in Delhi in 2014, and was later sent to the Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital for surgery to remove her extra leg.

After seeing her baby for the first time, her mother, Komal Sena, 24, said she was scared of her child.

She said: 'I was scared when I saw my daughter for the first time.' 

The family calls Varsha by the name of 'Ganesh' - a Hindu God with and elephant head who is normally depicted with four legs  - due to her extra limbs.

The rare disorder occurs in the womb when the cells form abnormally during embryonic development.

The embryo begins to develop as conjoined twins. But one twin stops growing, leaving the remaining developments - often limbs - of the undeveloped twin attached to the body of the live baby.

There are very few known cases of polymelia around the world.

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