BehindTheMedspeak: Mermaid syndrome baby surgery successful

Milagros Cerron was born in Peru in April, 2004 with an extremely rare condition called sirenomelia, or Mermaid syndrome.

It occurs in 1 in 60,000 births and most babies born with it do not survive more than a few hours.

In the condition an individual's legs are fused (Milagros is shown above prior to her surgical procedure).

She is resting comfortably now (below)

after a four hour procedure yesterday in Lima, Peru, during which her legs were separated.

An 16–year–old American girl named Tiffany Yorks, who had a similar corrective procedure when she was a few months old, is now 16 years old, and is the only other person on Earth known to have had this surgical procedure performed successfully.