11-month-old Chinese baby with three legs gets extra limb removed

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New Delhi: In a rare case, an 11-month-old boy from China born with three legs, underwent a successful complex surgery for 10-hours to have his extra limb removed at a hospital in Shanghai.

As per reports in the Daily Mail, the baby was born with three legs due to an extremely rare fault in pregnancy.

Doctors revealed that the extra limb didn't belong to the child, but was, reportedly, the remnants of his partially formed parasitic twin.

Parasitic twins occur when identical twins fail to separate, and the healthier one absorbs the underdeveloped twin that had possibly died in the womb itself.

The condition occurs in around one in a million live births.

The 11-month-old was diagnosed with a series of other conditions, including an undescended testicle, abdominal hernia and congenital heart disease which made the operation difficult.

Surgeons not only removed the extra limb but also cut off the foot on Xiao Fei's right leg before transplanting the foot on the extra leg onto his right leg.

The surgery was successfull, however, it was reported that the boy's kneecaps are missing, so further operation will be planned in future when the boy grows a bit older. 

This isn’t the first time that a case with a parasitic twin inside a child or with an extra organ has been recorded.