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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Asian J Neurosurg 2019; 14(01): 1-4
DOI: 10.4103/ajns.AJNS_209_17
Review Article

Human tail: A benign condition hidden out of social stigma and shame in young adult – A case report and review

Pramod Giri
Department of Neurosurgery, Super Speciality Hospital and Government Medical College, Nagpur, Maharashtra
,
Vaibhav Chavan
Department of Neurosurgery, Super Speciality Hospital and Government Medical College, Nagpur, Maharashtra
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A human tail is a rare congenital anomaly which mostly presents immediately after birth or in early childhood. Here, we are presenting a case of 17-year-old male who presented with 18-cm long tail, which was hidden till this age because of social stigma and shame. This is longest human tail reported of our knowledge. This patient presented to us because he started having difficulty, pain while sitting, and discomfort in daily activities because of long tail. We suspect there are far more cases of human tails in developing world which are hidden because of lack of knowledge, illiteracy, social stigma, and shame. This patient had no neurological deficit and had no bowel/bladder involvement. The radiological investigation was suggestive of spina bifida at L5and S3–S4 levels (site of attachment of the tail), and tip of the coccyx had bony spur directed posteriorly. Intraoperatively, no connection was found between tail and neural tissue. Human tail is associated with occult spinal lesions in 50% of cases, hence careful neurological and radiological investigations are warranted before surgical exploration.

Key-words:

Human tail - spina bifida - spinal dysraphism

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Nil.




Publication History

Article published online:
09 September 2022

© 2019. Asian Congress of Neurological Surgeons. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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