At first glance, four-month-old boy Hong Hong looks like a normal baby. That is, until one sees his hands and feet.
From the Pingjiang County in Hunan province, the four-month-old baby suffers from a condition called polydactylism, a congentital condition which gave him extra fingers and toes.
In total he has 31: “He has two palms, no thumbs and 15 fingers on both his hands, and eight toes on each foot,” said a report by The Strait Times.
Photo credit: People’s Daily
As it turned out, he had gotten his condition from his mother, who also has extra fingers.
His father Zou Chengling told People’s Daily: “My wife has one extra finger and toe on each of her hands and feet, so we were worried that our child would inherit the condition.
“But after going to three big hospitals in Shenzhen, doctors found no birth defects on our son during scans.”
Photo credit: People’s Daily
A professor at Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital for Pediatric Orthopedics, Liu Hong, told Zou Chenglin that surgery will be extremely difficult.
“The boy is currently too young for anesthetics but he will need to undergo surgery between six months and a year before the bones set,” said the People’s Daily report.
“Unfortunately for the impoverished family, the surgeries are likely to cost hundreds of thousands of Yuan—too much for them to bear.”
What is polydactylism?
Polydactylism, also known as hyperdactyly, is a congenital physical abnormality of having supernumerary fingers or toes. The condition is commonly found in humans, dogs, and cats.
Symptoms are easily diagnosable, since the condition presents itself on one or both hands. Usually, the extra digit is a small piece of soft tissue that can be removed.
The extra finger occasionally contains bone without joints, although rarely the extra digits can function as normal fingers.
The extra digit is most common on the ulnar (little finger) side of the hand, less common on the radial (thumb) side, and very rarely within the middle three digits.
These are respectively known as postaxial (little finger), preaxial (thumb), and central (ring, middle, index fingers) polydactyly. The extra digit is most commonly an abnormal fork in an existing digit, or it may rarely originate at the wrist as a normal digit does.
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