What is the condition called that when you are born your legs are stuck together?

star_gazer

Mermaid Syndrome, or Sirenomelia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirenomelia Oct 08 09, 3:23 PM

snuiteke

Sirenomelia, also known as Mermaid Syndrome.It is a very rare disease in which children are born with their two legs combined together. This is a very serious condition, and most who are born with it have an extremely short life.For this to happen, the fetus has to develop only one umbilical artery, rather than the two that are developed in a normal baby. The umbilical artery pumps blood from the fetus to the placenta. In a normal baby, the two umbilical arteries branch off the iliac arteries in the pelvis, these are the arteries that are responsible for the development of the legs and the organs in the pelvic areas like genitalia. In rare cases, a baby with Mermaid Syndrome does have two umbilical arteries, but one of the arteries is blocked, making it as if there were only one. When the baby is born, its legs are stuck together making it seem as if there were only one leg. The severity of this varies, in some of the worst cases, a baby has been born with both of its legs together and with only two bones in the entire leg. In other cases, a child is born with only the skin of the lower half of the legs fused together and all the bones are present. For the most part, babies are born with their entire legs stuck together and only three bones in the legs. As mentioned before, this is a very rare disease, it only occurs in 1% of all live born babies. Mermaid Syndrome comes with a lot of other complications, not just the legs. Children born with this often have kidneys that do not work properly, or may have no kidneys at all. Although some people may think that this does not affect anything but the lower half of the body, sometimes it can, some babies experience problems with their chests and hearts, sometimes even their brain. They often have lungs that are not developed enough for them to survive. Often times they will have small genitalia, deformed genitalia, or none at all. They could have pelvis bones that are not formed as they should be, or they could have no pelvic bones. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/950285/mermaid_syndrome_sirenomelia.html Oct 08 09, 3:28 PM