Bangalore: A complicated 27-hour-long surgical procedure to remove a parasitic conjoined twin from two-year-old girl Lakshmi has been completed successfully.

"Lakshmi is doing fine and her condition is stable," Chief Coordinator of Sparsh Hospital, Dr Mamata Patil said.

The next 48 to 72 hours are critical and a team of doctors will monitor Lakshmi, who is put on ventilators in the Intensive Care Unit, she said.

A team of 36 doctors performed the complex surgery for 27 hours during which Lakshmi's pelvic ring has been reconstructed and her two kidneys saved, a source in the hospital said.

She was brought to Sparsh Hospital, a part of the Narayana Health City, from a village in Araria district of Bihar by her parents Shambu and Poonam on October three.

Lakshmi is an Ischiopagus conjoined twin -- two bodies united at the pelvis. "Only one of the twins has a head and the other is a parasite," a doctor said.

Doctors who subjected the child to a series of medical tests, offered to perform the surgery free of cost.

The cost of the surgery has been put at Rs 25 lakh by the hospital.

"A major and critical step of separating the spines was achieved yesterday," Patil said.

Though Lakshmi's blood volume had to be changed twice, utmost care was taken to minimise the need for blood transfusion, he said.

Good wishes and prayers poured in for the girl not only from Bangalore but from all over the country.

"It has been an amazing and tremendously satisfying experience for us," Patil said.

"However, we are still not ready to celebrate as she will be in the critical zone for the next 48 to 72 hours," he said.

For Ashley D' cruz, chief paediatric surgeon, "the surgery went remarkably as per plan. We had most of the information required from pre-operative imaging and investigations and therefore there were very few surprises on the operating table and we were able to preserve all structures planned".

There was a kidney present in the parasitic twin which was connected to the urinary bladder and was working well. "We preserved it and moved it up along with blood supply to place it in Lakshmi's body", he said.

The team was also able to separate the duplicated large intestine.

"We took out all poorly developed structures on the right side which included a part of duplicated colon, internal reproductive organs and small urinary bladder".

All the normal structures going to the left side of the body were preserved, Ashley said.

"So, now Lakshmi has a normal rectum, anus, a normal urinary system and reproductive system," he said.

She, however, needs to be monitored in the ICU where she has been shifted and put on ventilator for the next 48 to 72 hours and it will prove to be the deciding factor, he said.

"The joy and professional satisfaction of being able to help this little child has been the prime motivating force," Ashley said.

"We are grateful to whole country from where good wishes poured in and more so to the Providence which played an important role," he said.

Lakshmi's father, Shambhu, heaving a sigh of relief said "we are much relieved now. Though doctors kept on assuring ever since the surgery began yesterday (Wednesday), we were in tension and kept praying to God".

He said his wife Poonam had not eaten even a morsel of food since yesterday and hoped she would eat something now.

On being asked when he would see his daughter, Shambhu said "whenever the doctors allow us".

Shambhu and his wife were still fervently praying for the recovery of their little daughter.

Though the doctors had opined that the surgery would take 40 hours, it was completed in 27 hours by a team of 36 doctors

Lakshmi, born into a labourer family of a village in Ahraria district of Bihar, was brought to the hospital on October 3. She underwent a series of medical examinations prior to the surgery.

Source : PTI