Doctors at AIIMS Bibinagar Remove Rare Human Tail From 3-Month-Old Boy
Yadadri-Bhongir: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bibinagar, performed a surgery on a three-month-old male infant to remove a rare human tail from the lumbosacral region. The tail was 15-centimetre long.
Dr Shashank Panda, the head of paediatric department at AIIMS Bibinagar, said the human tails are very rare cases and only 40 cases have been operated successfully so far in the world. In recent times, a human tail case was reported in China, but it took one year for the doctors to perform the surgery. However, we performed surgery on a three-month old boy and removed the rail.
The human tail is a rare congenital malformation that protrudes from the midline skin-covered lumbosacral region.
Stating that details of the patients should not be revealed as per the medical ethics, he quipped that the boy was from a district in Telangana state.
The three-month old child has associated occult spinal dysraphism from S1 to S5 vertebrae and anchored spinal cord syndrome with a risk of neurological deficit requiring meticulous and modification of surgical technique.
It took two and half hours for a three members doctors team to perform the surgery on the boy in January 2024 and remove the tail, he added.
“After removing it, we reconstructed the child's spinal canal using a sophisticated procedure. There was a spins bifida connected with the spinal cord which was dissected meticulously with repair of Dura. It was a complicated surgery as there was a chance for neurological problems,” he added.
After five days of the surgery, the boy was discharged from the hospital, he added.
He said that the postoperative recovery was uneventful. Patient is having no neurological deficit and good wound cosmesis at six months post surgery follow up. Hence, the operation was considered a success and the details of the rare surgery were announced, he added.
He made it clear that there was no chance for complications to develop to the boy in the future.