That extra digit needn't be a problem

After giving birth to twin girls, Julia Styrczula-Di Tullio was shocked to learn one of her daughters had an extra thumb.

She worried her child Marina might be ostracized and subjected to a lifetime of ridicule.

"I was heartbroken," she said. "I was like, 'What did I do wrong? Did I expose her to something in pregnancy?'"

It was nothing the Bensenville mom did. Marina's fraternal twin sister, Valeria, does not have the condition, but it's believed to be inherited from a distant ancestor.

It turns out that being born with extra fingers, known as polydactyly, is one of the most common congenital hand abnormalities, particularly in children of African descent, occurring in an estimated one in 1,000 births overall.

In fact, it's a trait Marina shares with the latest Bond girl.

Gemma Arterton, the newest actress to get screen exposure in the new Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace," was born with an extra digit on each hand. As she recently told Esquire magazine, the extra fingers were tied off in her childhood, then diminished and fell off, leaving only small bumps.

Former Chicago Cubs pitcher Antonio Alfonseca also had six fingers and was known as El Pulpo (The Octopus), but his extra finger reportedly didn't touch the ball and didn't affect his career.

The condition can be harmless, with no apparent cause, or may be part of a chromosomal syndrome.

The most difficult cases involve those in which the patient has extra fingers but no thumb. In those cases, the surgeon must rotate one of the fingers to oppose the others, and fashion it into a thumb. One study showed show such stand-in thumbs had half the range of motion and a fraction of the strength of a normal thumb.

But another study found the majority of those who simply had surgery for an extra thumb were satisfied or very satisfied with the outcome.

In Marina's case, treated at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, one thumb had in effect been split in two, so parts of the smaller appendage had to be used to build up the main thumb.

Dr. Terry Light, past president of the American Orthopaedic Association and the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, used bone from the extra thumb and a metal pin to reinforce the remaining thumb, and took tendons from the extra thumb to wrap and reinforce the main thumb.

While many parents are frightened to first see their child's malformed hand, Light got into the specialty because he realized surgery can usually restore normal function over time.

For the most dramatic surgeries, such as creation of a thumb, parents are sometimes in tears when they see a successful result.

More often, Light said, it takes time for the child to develop for parents to realize their little one will be fine.

"As the child grows, the parents become much more interested in whether they did their homework or took out the garbage or were unfair to their sister," Light said, "and the importance of the abnormality seems to diminish over time."

For Marina, the surgery took an hour and a half, and Dr. Light came out smiling and pronounced it a success.

Twelve hours later, Marina was crawling around with a tiny cast on her thumb, acting as if nothing had happened.

Now, two weeks after surgery, Marina's mom reports, the digit is starting to look more like a normal thumb. Marina should be able to use it normally, though the tip may not be as flexible because of the tendons wrapped around it for stability.

"Right after the surgery, it was like a weight was lifted off me," Julia said. "Now I feel she'll be a very confident little girl."