A baby boy with one eye in the center of his forehead and no nose was born in India last week. He survived only one day.
Doctors were shocked when they delivered the infant by cesarean section from the 34-year-old mother, Veena Chavan.
Dr. Ashok Anand, professor of gynecology at the hospital, told reporters, "The child must have possibly suffered from cyclopia."
A sonogram during Chavan's 32nd week of pregnancy revealed the baby was hydrocephalic, meaning water was accumulating on his brain. According to the doctor's report, medical staff wanted to perform an intrauterine shunting procedure but could not because of the advanced stage of her term.
Chavan not only grieved the loss of her son, but was upset that she did not even have an opportunity to see him.
"This was my third pregnancy. I lost my previous child while I was carrying. I was told that the baby had water in the brain but never had I expected the baby to be born with one eye and no nose," she told reporters.
Chavan's one surviving child is an 8-year-old daughter.
Surprisingly, this form of cyclopia occurs in roughly one in 250 embryos and is a rare form of holoprosencephaly, which affects how the front of the brain is formed during fetal development. With cyclopia, the eyes and nose don't form properly.
Such fetuses are often lost early in the pregnancy. Thus, despite the higher-than-expected odds, it's rarely seen. The cause is often the result of a genetic mutation, though alcoholic and diabetic mothers are at greater risk of carrying a cyclopic child.
In 2006, India saw another cyclopic baby born in the city of Chennai. The baby girl survived and was taken home by her parents. No recent reports offer any further information about her survival.
A year earlier, a one-eyed baby girl was born prematurely in Russia but died almost immediately after being delivered. Reports claimed her head, shoulders and back were covered with thick hair and a "small trunk" was growing above her eye.
Cases like these have been documented for hundreds of years but have surely occurred for thousands. The mythological Cyclops dates back to ancient Greece and may have been inspired by a cyclopic infant.
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