14 DAY TRIAL // Doctors at the Apollo Gleneagles Hospital in Kolkata, India have recently operated on an eight-month-old boy that was born with what appeared to be a second head.
Medical researchers explain that the rare medical condition Tofajjal was born with is known to the scientific community as encephalomeningocele.
This medical condition is extremely rare, meaning that it only affect one in 40,000 – 45,000 newborns.
Interestingly enough, encephalomeningocele is more common among babies born in Southeast Asia than it is among infants born in other parts of the world.
The condition boils down to the fact that, due to the presence of a fissure in the skull, both the meninges and brain substance leak out and more often than not form a bulge.
The doctors who operated on Tofajjal say that, in the case of this baby boy, the deformity on top of his head looked very much like a “parasitic twin.”
What's more, this so-called second head only grew bigger from the day Tofajjal was born until the day when it was removed.
“Tofajjal was born with a rare deformity - there was a second head maturing on top of his head,” neurosurgeon Sisir Das commented on this medical case, as cited by Daily Mail.
“I have never operated on such a big lesion. It was a very critical operation and slightest slip-up during the vital surgery might have ended the life of the baby,” he went on to say.
The eight-month-old boy was operated on about a month ago, on July 28. Since then, he has made significant progress and doctors have high hopes that he will make a full recovery.
“After most of the doctors and relatives in Tripura told us that our baby would not be cured and he might die soon, we took him to Kolkata in a critical condition.”
“None said that my child would live. But with the blessings of Allah, I am taking him back home,” mother Sabia Khatun told the press.