A team of surgeons successfully removed the second head of a Dominican baby Friday in a complex operation that doctors believe to be the first of its kind.

The medical team led by a Los Angeles-based neurosurgeon completed the operation on 7-week-old Rebeca Martinez in nearly 11 hours, saying it went smoothly.

“We are super happy. This is what we hoped for, and it happened,” her father, Franklin Martinez, told The Associated Press. “The only new thing now is that she’ll be coming home without the extra part she used to have.”

The second head, a partially formed twin that doctors said threatened the girl’s development, had its own partly developed brain, ears, eyes and lips.

Complex surgery

Eighteen surgeons, nurses and doctors took several rotations to cut off the undeveloped tissue, clip the veins and arteries, and close the skull using a bone and skin graft from the second head.

“The girl is doing great. The surgery is over, and her head has been closed,” said Dr. Santiago Hazim, medical director of Santo Domingo’s Center for Orthopedic Specialties, where the surgery was performed.

He said she was in intensive care and would be in the hospital at least 10 days.

“Now we begin the second big risk, the post-operation recovery,” Hazim said. Rebeca is still susceptible to infection or hemorrhaging, he said.

Maria Gisela Hiciano feeds her daughter Rebeca at the CARE clinic in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in this photo taken Tuesday. Rebeca, a Dominican infant born with a second, partially formed head, had surgery Friday to remove the second head.

The surgery was complicated because the two heads shared arteries. Although only partially developed, the mouth on her second head moved when Rebeca was being breast-fed.

Crucial operation

The operation was critical because the head on top was growing faster than the lower one, said Dr. Jorge Lazareff, the lead brain surgeon and director of pediatric neurosurgery at the University of California at Los Angeles’ Mattel Children’s Hospital.

Without an operation, he said, “the child would barely be able to lift her head at 3 months old.”

Lazareff said the pressure from the second head, attached on top of the first and facing up, would have prevented Rebeca’s brain from developing.

CURE International, a Lemoyne, Pa.-based charity that funds the orthopedic center and gives medical care to disabled children in developing countries, is paying an estimated $100,000 for the surgery.

Parents wait

Before the surgery began, Rebeca’s parents followed her to the door of the operating room and said a prayer over their baby, holding hands and gently caressing their daughter’s head. “Be strong, Rebeca. May God be with you,” her 26-year-old mother Maria Gisela Hiciano said.

During the operation she and Martinez, 29, waited in a separate room watching baseball on television and receiving visitors who brought flowers and stuffed animals. Psychologists also visited them.

Lazareff led a team that successfully separated conjoined Guatemalan twin girls in 2002. He performed Rebeca’s operation along with Dr. Benjamin Rivera, a neurosurgeon at the Medical Center of Santo Domingo and the orthopedic center.

Doctors say it’s possible that Rebeca won’t need physical therapy and will develop as a normal child.

Rare condition

Rebeca was born Dec. 17 with the undeveloped head of her twin, a condition known as craniopagus parasiticus.

Twins born conjoined at the head are extremely rare, accounting for one of every 2.5 million births. Parasitic twins like Rebeca are even rarer.

Rebeca is the eighth documented case in the world of craniopagus parasiticus, Hazim said.

All the other documented infants died before birth, making it the first known surgery of its kind, according to Lazareff and the other doctors.

Martinez, a tailor, and his wife, who is a supermarket cashier, together make about $200 a month and have two other children ages 4 and 1.

They say doctors told them Rebeca would be born with a tumor on her head but that none of the prenatal tests showed a second head.