An international team of doctors hopes to operate in the Dominican Republic next month to remove an undeveloped second head from a baby girl born with one of the world’s rarest birth defects, caused when a conjoined twin fails to develop in the womb. The baby, Rebeca Martinez, was born in mid-December at a hospital in Santo Domingo with the head of an undeveloped twin attached to the top of her skull, facing upward. The infant is otherwise healthy but her brain cannot develop normally unless the undeveloped head is removed, said Dr. Santiago Hazim, medical director at the CURE International Center for Orthopedic Specialties, where the surgery is tentatively set for Feb. 6 or 7. Her condition, cranio pagus parasiticus, is so rare that there have only been eight documented cases in the world, and no known cases where surgery has been attempted to correct it, Hazim said in a telephone interview.
