The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Rare surgery performed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 07, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Rare surgery performed

Staff Reporter

The 20-day-old baby was born with two mouths

ORDEAL OVER: The 20-day-old baby recuperating at the Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad after corrective surgery on Thrsday. — Photo: P.V. Sivakumar

HYDERABAD: Oblivious to the buzz around, the cute and chubby baby girl sleeps peacefully in the paediatric surgery wing of Gandhi Hospital. Recuperating from the first of its kind surgery performed on a 20-day baby, the infant looks normal barring some sutures around her mouth.

The infant was born with two mouths -- one an accessory mouth on the left cheek. The child had two pairs of lips, two oral cavities, two separate sets of gums when she was rushed to Gandhi Hospital from Nalgonda within 12 hours of her birth on September 14.

The Head, Department of Paediatric Surgery, V. Prabhakar and his team studied the deformity. One mouth was communicating with the food pipe (pharynx) while the other one with lips and oral cavity was a blind one. Yet the accessory mouth had its own jaws, rudimentary teeth and salivary secretions.

Another problem was both sides of medial part of lips were paralysed due to developmental defect where only lateral parts of the lip had nerve supply and normal synchronised movements of lips.

"Nowhere in the world medical literature, a similar case was reported. There were no guidelines to follow and no previous experience to fall back on either in the country or abroad. From then on we were on our own, organising ourselves to carry out the surgery, holding cross departmental discussions with ENT and Plastic Surgery specialists ," Dr.Prabhakar said. The 4-D CT scan facility available with Kamineni Wockhardt Hospital provided insight into the rare anomaly enabling them plan a reconstruction of the face. The surgery team took three-and-a-half hours on October 4 to correct the deformity. The surgery which would have cost Rs.2 to Rs. 3 lakhs was done free of cost. The parents of the infant, Lakshmi and Prabhakar Reddy, a mechanic, who lost their first child when he was seven months old say with a smile, "Our daughter looks normal now."

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