Thirteen-month-old Milagros Cerron was stable, awake and taking in liquids 15 hours after doctors, in a nationally televised surgery, separated her fused legs in the second such successful operation on record to correct a rare deformity known as "mermaid syndrome."
The lead physician said Cerron's 11-surgeon medical team believes she could be walking within two years, but cautioned the bright-eyed girl will need years of surgery to reconstruct her internal organs.
"In accordance with the anatomic findings that we have encountered, it is possible that she will walk," Dr. Luis Rubio told reporters late Wednesday. "There is extraordinary capillary flow. The reflexes are now independently evident in each foot."
The girl -- whose name means "miracles" -- was born with her legs fused together from her thighs to her ankles inside a seamless sack of skin and fat.
Rubio said Tiffany Yorks, a 16-year-old American girl was the only other person known to have undergone a successful surgery to correct the rare congenital defect, which occurs in one out of every 70,000 births and is almost always fatal within days of birth.
He said there is a third person in Asia who suffers from the deformity, which is known as sirenomelia. But he did not provide details or identify that individual.
Doctors had planned to begin correcting Milagros' deformity by separating her legs up to her knees. But the 4 1/2 hour, pre-dawn surgery Wednesday progressed better than the medical team had expected and they were able to seperate the entire length of her legs.
Milagros' father, Ricardo Cerron, 24, broke into tears as Rubio made the first incision. Her mother, Sara Arauco, 20, put her hand to her mouth. A nurse standing behind her chair put her hands on Arauco's shoulders as tears welled up in her eyes.
During the first 90 minutes of the surgery, Rubio granted several live interviews on Peru's Tuesday late-night newscasts. He provided a running commentary on the operation's progress as he and the other surgeons carefully cut through bone and muscle, cauterizing blood vessels along the way to control bleeding.
They removed four silicone bags inserted months earlier to make Milagros' skin more pliable.
The first sign the surgery was going well came 30 minutes into the procedure, when Rubio announced that they could cut past a major artery that had connected both legs without performing a complicated bypass.
At midnight, they separated Milagros' fused heels, and for a little more than an hour continued upward, slowly separating the legs toward the child's groin.
Her parted limbs were gaping wounds, but the ghastly appearance was quickly transformed as the medical team stitched the pre-stretched skin around each leg.
Just before 3am, Rubio held up the girl's legs in a V-shape, displaying the line of stitches extending up from her heels to her inner thighs.
"This is the final result that we have come to in this extraordinary surgical intervention," he announced. "This surgical intervention has been a true success."
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS