Parents of an infant boy in Hunan Province born with 15 fingers and 16 toes are asking the public’s help so their child, who has the condition polydactyly, could have surgery within the next few months to correct the condition.
The surgery for the baby, named Honghong, to correct polydactyly would cost thousands of dollars and would be very difficult. Liu Hong, professor at the Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital for Pediatric Orthopedics, explained that since Honghong is too young for anesthesia, he cannot have the surgery now.
However, he needs to have the operation when he is between six months and one year before his bones set. The boy’s condition surprised the parents because the mother, who has two extra fingers and two extra toes, underwent several pre-natal scans in Shenzhen hospitals, including 4D ultrasound, but the results said her baby would be normal, that is he would have 10 fingers and 10 toes, reported Mashable.
Some photos of Honghong and his mother were posted on Chinese website Imagine China. It showed the three-month-old child with a total of 31 fingers and toes: eight toes on each foot and seven fingers on one hand and eight on the other hand.
About two in 1,000 children have the condition. Another male child was born in Shenyang in 2011 with 31 toes and fingers, but the boy had an operation when he was six. Before his surgery, the Chinese boy found it difficult to use his hand because three of the fingers on both hands were fused together. Classmates in school teased the child as a “monster.”
The two boys broke the record set in 2014 by Indian man Devendra Suthar from Gujarat who was born with 14 toes and 14 fingers, according to the Guinness Book of Records. Before Suthar, the record were held by two Indian kids with 12 fingers and 13 toes each.