Mermaid Syndrome

The Mermaid Syndrome Is Aptly Named

The mermaid syndrome is fortunately an exceedingly rare condition. It is so named because the legs of a newborn child are fused together at birth, giving the appearance of a mermaid’s tail. Sometimes, the legs can be separated by surgery. In some instances, there are leg bones but no feet, and in a few other cases, a baby is born without any well defined leg bones. The condition is almost always fatal since in nearly all cases more than the legs is involved. In most instances, the lower part of the body is malformed and the lower body organs cannot function normally, or may even not be present. Around 1 out of every 100,000 pregnancies involves this type of a condition. One in a hundred thousand would not seem to be what one would consider rare, but we are not necessarily talking about live births. What is exceedingly rare is the fact that a baby born with the mermaid syndrome might live for more than a few hours. In the vast majority of cases, the presence of the syndrome results either in a stillbirth or a miscarriage. The medical term for mermaid syndrome is sirenomelia, siren being another word for the mermaid of mythology. The term sirenomelia sequence is also used to identify the syndrome.

Less Than A Handful Of Survivors

Some sources say that there are as many as 5 living people having this syndrome, but there appear to be only two or three persons on record who have the mermaid syndrome and who have lived for more than a few days. The survivors are generally in fragile health. The longest-lived survivor was born in 1988. Her legs were successfully separated as an infant. She is able to get around without a wheelchair but with some difficulty, as the bones in her legs are extremely fragile.

Brave Little Girls

Another girl, who could not have surgery for separation because of the pattern of her circulatory system, lived long enough to be able to attend an elementary school. She survived two kidney transplants, but died of pneumonia at the age of 10 while in the 5th grade. A photograph taken of her shows a happy, smiling little girl who was popular in school, and apparently enthusiastic about life.

A Peruvian girl, born with the mermaid syndrome in 2004 has had to go though a number of traumatic but successful operations to separate her legs and rehabilitate other parts of her lower body. The girl is able to walk, but faces another 10 years or so of rehabilitation and surgery before she can lead what could be considered a normal life. All three survivors had either normally functioning kidneys or kidneys that could be kept functioning by dialysis prior to a transplant.

Multiple Abnormalities Are Common

The reason that the vast majority of babies born with the mermaid syndrome die so quickly is not because their legs are fused together. It is usually because one or more of their internal organs, mostly those in or near the pelvic region, are malformed or, in some cases, totally absent. The pelvic bones are often abnormally small, fused, or in some cases, absent. Kidneys are often either malformed or absent. No child has ever survived more than a few hours if born without functioning kidneys. In some cases, even the lungs may be deformed, so it is little wonder that the life span of the affected child is so short. The spine and sometimes the brain can even be affected. In a few instances, reconstructive surgery, always a high risk procedure on an infant, has been done, but more often than not there is nothing that can be done. In most cases, an early death could be considered to be a blessing.

The Cause Remains A Mystery

No one really knows what causes the mermaid syndrome. One reason for this may be that the condition is so rare, and the odds of survival are so abysmally low, that there is little need seen to invest in researching the possible causes. One school of thought is that it is an inherited or genetic condition, but there is little if any evidence to back this up. Since the condition is almost always fatal at birth, it is unlikely it could be passed on from one generation to the next. A more popular school of thought is that poor health of the mother or improper prenatal care may be a factor. Again, there is a lack of historical data to back this up. It has been discovered, though, that there is a higher incidence of babies having the syndrome when they are born to mothers having diabetes mellitus. What is known is that when the syndrome appears, it is usually the result of an abnormality in the blood vessels of the umbilical cord. A normal umbilical cord contains two arteries, but in the case of mermaid syndrome, the umbilical cord contains only a single artery, or if it has two, one of them is blocked. The lower part of the body of the fetus, deprived of a normal blood supply, will then fail to develop properly.