In the Indian city of Gurgaon, surgeons performed a unique operation: they extracted two underdeveloped embryos from the stomach of a one-month-old girl. A rare pathology, known as “fetus in fetu” (fetus in fetu), occurs extremely rarely – about 300 such cases have been registered in the world.
As reported by the Times of India, the peculiarity of this situation is that two embryos turned out to be inside the child at once, which occurs in approximately only 10% of such anomalies. The woman was initially expecting triplets, but the two fetuses did not develop independently and ended up being included in the body of the third girl.
The parents went to the Fortis Memorial Research Institute Hospital when the baby developed a swollen abdomen, irritability and refusal to eat. The examination revealed two formations in the abdominal cavity, which doctors initially mistook for tumors, but it turned out to be underdeveloped embryos.
The operation lasted about two hours. Surgeons successfully removed the “parasite twins” without damaging the girl’s vital organs. After the stabilization of the baby’s condition, she was discharged from the hospital, and now she is recovering.
According to the doctors, the case is unique both from the point of view of diagnosis and surgical intervention. “Our main task was to preserve the health of the child without damaging the organs and vessels located near the embryos,” experts noted.
