Child born with three legs going home after surgery in Australia

A Bangladeshi child born with a third leg attached to her pelvis is returning home after a successful surgery in Australia.

Choity Khatun, aged three, was born with caudal twinning, meaning that part of a twin had developed in her pelvis.

Australian surgeons spent months figuring out how to remove the additional limb and reconstruct her pelvic area.

The charity Children First Foundation helped bring Choity from her Bangladeshi village into Australia.

Head of surgery at Monash Children's Hospital in the state of Victoria, Dr Chris Kimber, said Choity's case was very rare and the surgery had been "daunting".

The operation is sort of determined by the individual and you have to spend a lot of time trying to analyse what's there and then plan a procedure that takes that into account

He told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The Australian team held considerable discussions with doctors in Bangladesh, who had already performed some surgery.

The team had to decide whether further surgery was even possible or beneficial before she was brought to Australia last year.
Doctors in Bangladesh had removed part of the leg "but she was still left with a large mass sitting there in her pelvis between her two normal legs", Dr Kimber said.

Because there's part of a twin in there, she had two rectums, two vaginas, potentially two anuses - double bits that were growing into a very abnormal area.

After a long planning process, the team commenced the surgery in November.

They removed what was left of the leg and carried out reconstruction work to ensure that little Choity was continent.

Dr Kimber said the child, who is partially blind, was now walking and running around, and had put on weight.

He said she might need further corrective surgery during her teenage years but would be able to return home to Bangladesh with her mother "without medication or surgical aids".

Her mother, Shima Khatun, told Australian media on Thursday that she was looking forward to going home to her family and watch her daughter play.

Everything is good now… she can play like other babies… she is the same [as them]