{"id":256125,"date":"2016-10-08T13:41:26","date_gmt":"2016-10-08T13:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=256125"},"modified":"2016-10-08T13:41:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T13:41:26","slug":"indian-teen-has-a-20cm-tail-removed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=256125","title":{"rendered":"Indian teen has a 20cm ‘tail’ removed"},"content":{"rendered":"

A teenager with a 20cm “tail” growing at the bottom of his spine has undergone surgery to have it removed.<\/p>\n

It started to appear on the 18-year-old’s back just after his 14th birthday.<\/p>\n

He and his family, from Nagpur in India, had kept it a secret because they were worried he would be bullied.<\/p>\n

They finally went to see a doctor after it grew too long to hide – and had begun to develop a bone inside.<\/p>\n

It’s thought to be the longest ever recorded on a human – although cases are very rare.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
Video caption<\/span>A teenager in India has a 20cm ‘tail’ removed from his back<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

“It became a problem when the tail grew outside the body,” said his mum, who doesn’t want to be named.<\/p>\n

“He would just lift the tail every time he needed to change his clothes.<\/p>\n

“I could see that it was very annoying and painful for him, so I took him to a hospital.”<\/p>\n

\"the<\/div>\n

Doctors say the teenager might have developed the tail in the womb as a result of a spinal deformity, but that it appeared outside only after he grew up.<\/p>\n

“When the size of the tail grew… [it] began to press on the boy’s back,” said surgeon, Dr Pramod Giri.<\/p>\n

“It was cosmetically and psychologically disturbing for him.”<\/p>\n

Although surgically removing a tail isn’t a very complicated procedure, it must be carried out by a neurosurgeon as the growth of tail involves a part of the spinal cord.<\/p>\n

It normally develops when the end of the spine is flattened in some way.<\/p>\n

The teenager will be kept in hospital for a few days and then allowed back home – without his tail.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A teenager with a 20cm “tail” growing at the bottom of his spine has undergone surgery to have it removed. It started to appear on the 18-year-old’s back just after his 14th birthday. He and his family, from Nagpur in India, had kept it a secret because they were worried he would be bullied. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":256127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/256127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}