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Girl Dies After Second Head Is Removed

By PETER PRENGAMAN, Associated Press Writer

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - An infant girl died Saturday after surgery to remove a second head, her mother said.

A medical team completed the operation Friday evening but said 8-week-old Rebeca Martinez had been susceptible to infection or hemorrhaging. The baby died 12 hours after the surgery, believed to be the first of its kind.

"She was too little to resist the surgery," the mother, 26-year-old Maria Gisela Hiciano, said by telephone from her home, sobbing softly.

Hiciano said doctors told her Rebeca died around 6 a.m.

The second head, which doctors said threatened the girl's development, grew from the top of Rebeca's skull and had its own partly developed brain, ears, eyes and lips.

During the surgery, 18 surgeons, nurses and doctors had taken several rotations to cut off the undeveloped tissue, clip the veins and arteries, and close the skull using a bone and skin graft from the second head.

Doctors had warned her parents that Rebeca confronted "the second big risk, the post-operation recovery," according to Dr. Santiago Hazim, medical director of Santo Domingo's Center for Orthopedic Specialties, where the surgery was performed.

The operation was critical because the head on top was growing faster than the lower one, said Dr. Jorge Lazareff, the lead brain surgeon and director of pediatric neurosurgery at the University of California at Los Angeles' Mattel Children's Hospital.

Lazareff led a team that successfully separated conjoined Guatemalan twin girls in 2002.

Hiciano and her husband, 29-year-old Franklin Martinez, have two other children, ages 4 and 1.

I have such a fascination for conjoined twins, but this is just sad. They called the extra head craniopagus parasiticus...another human who was living as a parasite rather than as an individual. It's like the 8th case of the condition in recorded history...amazing.

If you follow the link in the title above, there is an incredible slide show of the baby, including a really intense x-ray-type pic.

I feel so bad for the parents. Reminds me of the line in episode 11 or 12 of Six Feet Under:

"Some babies are just too good for this world."