Surgeons in India have reportedly removed a 20cm tail growing on a teenager's lower back as he found it too painful to bear. The 18-year-old's family thought at first the growth was a "good luck charm" and ignored it, said the doctor who operated on him at Nagpur's Super Specialty Hospital.Then the growth, known as a vestigial tail, began causing him problems while sitting and sleeping, the Times of India reported.Dr Pramod Giri, head of the neurosurgery department at Neuron Hospital, said: "The defect can be surgically corrected within a few months of birth. Since it grows with age it cannot remain undetected."But the parents, as well as the child, hid the fact all these years."When the size of the tail grew and a bone developed inside it, the tail began to press on the boy's back. It was cosmetically and psychologically disturbing for him. Hence the parents approached us."Though the surgery is not very demanding, it is done by a neurosurgeon as it involves part of the spinal cord. It arises from a compression at the tail end of the back and is medically referred to as a neurodevelopment abnormality. This case is very rare ... the tail is apparently the longest recorded so far." ..