Teen Born With Extra Arms, Fingers Dangling From Chest To Undergo Surgery

A 14-year-old girl, who was born with two extra arms and half-formed fingers dangling from her chest, will undergo a surgery to get the limbs removed. Veronica Cominguez lives in Iligan City in the Philippines and has been living with the extra parts — belonging to a parasitic twin who did not develop properly — for more than a decade.

The young girl will reportedly be flown to neighboring Thailand for the surgery in the coming weeks after locals managed to raise money for her operation.

"When I was little, I thought it was just a foot. But as I grew up, it became bigger," Veronica said, according to the Daily Mail. She added that the parts are heavy and limit her movement. "It keeps swinging" and sometimes leaks fluid that makes her dress wet.

Veronica's mother Flora Cominguez said she couldn't properly see a doctor during her pregnancy and her other twin child failed to fully develop. Talking about the discharge that comes out of the extra limbs, she said: "The liquid that comes out of the opening smells bad, like human excretion."

While the family had been worrying about Veronica's future, her doctor told the family that the extra limbs can be removed through a simple operation.

"Most of these cases can be removed because, usually, the body structures involved are not vital," Dr. Beda Espineda, a pediatric surgeon at the Philippine Children's Medical Center, said. "Most of them are just attached to the skin or bones. For surgeons, it is easy to remove."

A spokesman from the Barangay council of Kabacsanan said: "It has been arranged for Veronica to have an operation and we hope that she will live a normal, healthy life after this... Life has not been easy for her but she's a very sensible, clever and mature girl... She's a wonderful pupil. Everyone is very pleased for her that she can soon have an operation."

Parasitic twin, also known as unequal conjoined twin, occurs when a twin embryo begins developing in utero, but the pair does not fully separate, and one embryo maintains dominant development. The undeveloped twin is called parasitic, rather than conjoined. The independent twin is called the autosite.

Last year in May, a baby born in northern India with two heads underwent a surgery to remove the parasitic twin that was "feeding off" her blood supply. A team of surgeons removed the head hanging over the little girl’s chest in a four-hour operation.