Baby dies after surgery to remove 2d head
Team operated on Dominican girl
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- An infant girl born with a second head bled to death yesterday after complex surgery to remove her partially formed twin, her parents and doctors said.
A medical team completed the 11-hour operation Friday night and said 8-week-old Rebeca Martinez died seven hours later. Doctors had warned after the surgery that the girl would be at great risk of infection or hemorrhaging.
"We knew this was a very risky surgery, and now we accept what God has decided," Rebeca's father, 29-year-old Franklin Martinez, said at a news conference with his wife. "Rebeca is no longer with us physically, but no one will forget her."
Martinez said the family would bury Rebeca in a private funeral later in the day.
The girl lost much blood in the operation, which apparently caused her to suffer a heart attack, said Dr. Jorge Lazareff, the lead surgeon.
Friends and family donated almost 4 gallons of blood for surgeons to use during Rebeca's operation.
"This was not a failure or an error," Lazareff said. "When we left here last night at midnight, the girl was in stable condition. At some point in the middle of the night, she started to bleed."
Rebeca was born Dec. 10 with the undeveloped head of her twin, an extremely rare condition known as craniopagus parasiticus.
Fully developed twins born conjoined at the head are extremely rare, accounting for one of every 2.5 million births, but parasitic twins, where one twin stops developing in the womb, are even rarer. Rebecca was the eighth documented case in the world of craniopagus parasiticus, doctors said.
All the other infants documented to have had the condition died before birth, making Rebeca's surgery the first known operation of its kind.
Without an operation, Rebeca would have barely been able to lift her head at 3 months old. Her doctors said the pressure from the second head, attached on top of the first and facing up, would have prevented her brain from developing.
"She was too little to withstand the surgery," said her mother, 26-year-old Maria Gisela Hiciano, sobbing softly. She said doctors told her Rebeca died about 6 a.m. 