Doctors begin to separate 'Mermaid' baby's legs

[kuozzman]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/02/09/peru.mermaid.baby.reut/index.html

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) -- Doctors have successfully taken the first step toward separating the fused legs of Milagros Cerron, a 9-month-old Peruvian baby dubbed the "Little Mermaid" because of her rare birth defect, her parents said on Wednesday.

"Everything went well, but it's a tough time. Her mother is crying, we're crying," her father Ricardo Cerron, 24, told Reuters after Tuesday's operation to begin correcting the condition, which is nearly always fatal.

Milagros -- whose name means "miracles" in Spanish -- was born with "mermaid syndrome," or sirenomelia, a condition affecting 1-in-60,000 to 1-in-100,000 people. Only a handful of patients have survived more than a few hours and there are few precedents for the risky separation surgery.

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