Foetus skeleton found in woman's abdomen 36 years after ectopic pregnancy: doctor

[compl3x]

Doctors in India have removed the skeleton of a foetus that had been inside a woman for 36 years in what is believed to be the world's longest ectopic pregnancy.

 

The woman, 60, became pregnant at the age of 24 but suffered a miscarriage because the foetus had been growing outside of her uterus, a doctor told news agency AFP.

 

The woman, from a poor rural area of central India, was "terrified" of having surgery to remove the remains of the foetus at the time and instead sought medication for the pain at a local clinic.

 

Although the pain gradually subsided, it returned years later and forced the woman to seek medical help at a hospital in western India.

 

"She came to us complaining of pain in the abdomen," Dr Murtaza Akhtar, head of surgery at the NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences in the city of Nagpur, said.

 

Doctors felt a lump on the woman's lower right abdomen and feared it could be cancer but further tests and scans revealed a calcified mass.

 

"Once we saw the scans, our first reaction was 'what are we dealing with?' It was actually a matured skeleton encapsulated in a calcified sac," Dr Akhtar said.

 

"A 60-year-old woman with a foetus lying in her abdomen for 36 years is a medical marvel. It's something we had never heard about."

 

The doctors searched medical literature and discovered a woman in Belgium who had retained the remains of a foetus for 18 years following an ectopic pregnancy, the longest they could find on record.

 

An ectopic pregnancy occurs when the egg implants outside the uterus, usually in the fallopian tubes.

 

A team of doctors successfully performed surgery to remove the mass.

 

"She was shocked when she first got to know what had happened. But she is fine now and is recuperating," Dr Akhtar said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-26/foetus-skeleton-found-in-womans-abdomen-after-36-years/5697558

 

Yikes.

[MikeChipshop Member]

Could have been worse, they could have found bite marks as well...

[+Warwagon MVC]

Pictures or it didn't happen.