Bangalore, November 7:

Indian surgeons said

today they had successfully removed the extra limbs from a two-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs, in a gruelling operation that lasted more than a day.

The girl, named Lakshmi, was born fused at the pelvis to a “parasitic twin” that stopped developing in the womb. She had absorbed the organs and body parts of the undeveloped foetus, a condition that occurs once in 50,000 conjoined twin births, requiring the rare, risky operation — the first of its kind performed in India.

After over 24 hours of surgery, Lakshmi was breathing today with the aid of a ventilator and under observation at the intensive care unit of Bangalore’s Sparsh Hospital.

“I’m very relieved and proud of my team,” said Sharan Patil, the orthopaedic surgeon who led the team that operated on her. “But we still have 48 to 72 hours in the post-operative period we have to be extremely careful about.”

“She is a very small, delicate child and has been through a major operation,” the doctor said. “Even very small things can cause a major impact so we are keeping a very close watch on her.” A team of 36 doctors covering a range of specialities from paediatrics to plastic surgery removed Lakshmi’s extra limbs, saved one of her kidneys that was in both bodies and reconstructed her pelvis.

Doctors said the girl would have been unlikely to live into her teens with her condition. “The surgery went according to the plan — every step of it was successful. There were no setbacks whatsoever,” a tired but cheerful Patil said.