An extremely rare case of ischiopagus tripus has emerged from Indonesia where a set of twins were born with their bodies fused together and shared organs. According to scientists, such cases of conjoined twins are very rare and occur only once in two million births. The twin boys were born with three legs, four arms, and one penis. They also share one bladder, rectum, and intestine.
The conjoined twins, born in 2018, were referred to as 'spider twins' due to how their bodies were stitched together in an extremely rare manner; only a handful of such cases have ever been recorded.
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Due to the complications, not many such conjoined twins live past the infancy stage, but the Indonesian boys made it against the odds. The rarity of such cases can be attributed to the stillbirths or infant deaths that occur in as many as two-thirds of all conjoined twin cases.
It wasn't easy, as the toddlers were unable to sit up and were forced to lie flat for the first three years of their lives. A team of surgeons performed a painstaking operation to amputate their third leg and stabilise their hip and pelvic bone so they could sit upright. They were also provided with continuous physical therapy and rehabilitation for their physical activity.
"The rarity of ischiopagus tripus conjoined twins complicates the surgical separation, owing to the lack of cases and high complexity," a study reported in the American Journal of Case Reports said.
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According to doctors, twin separation should be attempted when one twin has a high chance of not surviving due to lethal anomalies or when one has failed to survive.
"There are few other reports of successful separation of ischiopagus tripus twins; we hope more will follow sometime soon when we encounter such cases in the future. In our case, we learned that surgical management might provide improvement in quality of life, even though the patients were not candidates for separation surgery," the doctors said.
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