Victoria’s Secret model Karolina Kurkova- who was voted E! entertainment’s World’s Sexiest Woman Friday – can finally squash those rumors about her curiously vanishing bellybutton.

“She had an operation when she was an infant,” her rep told the Daily News. “It’s a fact and just thank God she’s healthy.”

The mystery of her strangely smooth tummy surfaced again as the Czech supermodel strutted her stuff on the runway in Miami two weeks ago.

There was simply an indentation where the center “button” should have been.

And don’t be fooled by the glossy magazine spread: though the voluptuous blond seems to have a perfect button in the pages of magazines and catalogs, industry sources have revealed that is usually the result of photo retouching.

So what belly button condition could baby Kurkova have had?

Doctors say it was likely an umbilical hernia.

“It does look like [she may have had] an umbilical hernia as a child that was either fixed or not fixed, which can distort the belly button,” said Dr. Matthew Schulman, a plastic surgeon at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Medical Center.

The condition is a fairly common in infants, Schulman said. Usually a portion of the intestine has popped through the abdominal muscles, causing an oversized “outie.”

“Most people have them fixed, because you should have any hernias fixed,” Schulman said.

That analysis could dispel rumors suggested that Kurkova had a vanity surgery. The media frenzy over the barely-there navel has stoked rumors that run the gamut of stories of a tummy tuck gone awry to suggestions that Kurkova was simply born sans button.

Dr. Schulman is quick to quash the latter: “It’s not accurate to say that someone just does not have a belly button.”

source

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