Two extra limbs of teen with rare condition removed by AIIMS doctors

In a ground-breaking medical achievement, doctors at AIIMS Delhi successfully performed a rare surgery on a 17-year-old boy to remove two extra lower limbs hanging from his abdomen. The condition, known as an incomplete parasitic twin, is a rare phenomenon where an underdeveloped twin, which has not fully formed, attaches to the host twin and survives by feeding off the host's body.

Dr Asuri Krishna, the Chief Surgeon at AIIMS Delhi, explained, "This condition is what we call an incomplete parasitic twin. It's a twin that has not formed completely but it is feeding on the host. This surgery is challenging because it is feeding on the host. It derives a lot of his blood supply, nerve supply, and everything from the host. The challenge is to identify those, and to ligate them and to cut them. We also have to see what attachments it has with the abdominal viscera, whether it's attached to the liver, intestine, or the colon. Fortunately, in this patient, there was no major attachment."