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Images that appeared on the Internet in early 2005 were photographs of a 10-month-old Egyptian girl named Manar Maged who was born with craniopagus parasiticus, a very rare birth defect that develops when an embryo starts to split into identical twins but does not complete the process. Often the second, undeveloped twin forms as an extra limb or trunk, but in Magar's extremely unusual case it formed as a second head attached to her skull. The twin could blink and smile but was not capable of independent life: On 19 February 2005, Manar underwent a 13-hour operation performed by a 13-member surgical team to remove her conjoined twin. As of mid-April 2005, Reuters reported that Manar had been transferred out of intensive care and was eating normally: Manar had five subsequent surgeries to insert valves to drain excess fluid from her brain. Unfortunately, on 25 March 2006, a little over a year after her original surgery, and just days shy of what would have been her 2nd birthday, Manar Maged died. During the few hours she was in the hospital prior to her death, she was found to be suffering from a brain infection, pneumonia, and heart trouble. Her condition deteriorated rapidly after she failed to respond to medication. There had been ten previous surgical cases like Maged's, but she was the only one to survive the procedure.
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