Doctors are trying to figure out what to do, say they can't simply cut the tail off

Jun 22, 2013 20:11 GMT  ·  By

A baby boy recently born in China is suffering with a rare medical condition that has triggered a tail to grow at the end of his spine.

His mother is desperately asking that doctors save him by cutting it off, yet it appears that doing so is not really an option. At least not for the time being.

“We have asked the surgeons to remove the tail but they tell us it is not that simple,” Chen Wei stated.

Daily Mail reports that the rare condition Xio Wei is suffering with is called spina bifida. Specialists also call this odd phenomenon a split spine.

The condition reportedly boils down to the fact that, while he was still inside his mother's womb, Xio Wei did not properly develop, meaning that his spine has a gap in it.

Because of the gap in his spinal column, the membranes and the spinal cord that should be tucked away in it have pushed out of the baby boy's body.

This caused him to develop a sack towards the lower end of his spine. This sack is the tail that Xio Wei's mother is so eager to see disappear.

What worries doctors is the fact that, because of his condition, the baby boy risks having his nervous system affected by various infections that could eventually prove fatal.

The same source informs us that, for the time being, Xio Wei's tail measures some 10 centimeters in length.

It keeps growing as the weeks go by, and it would just form again if the doctors were to attempt to surgically remove it.

“Xiao's growth is quite well developed and now measures some 10 centimeters (almost 4 inches). If we cut it off it will simply grow again.”

“We need to repair the spinal canal first to stop it reoccurring,” Surgeon Huang Chuanping commented on the difficulty of this case.

Apparently, there are many forms of spina bifida. The one baby Xia Wei is suffering with is called myelomeningocele and ranks amongst the most serious of the many variants of the condition.