You Won’t Believe What Doctors Found In 92-Year-Old Woman’s Tummy

A 92-year-old Chilean woman was taken to the hospital after a fall recently and doctors performed a routine exam. They were shocked when a hip X-ray revealed a 4.4-pound fetus filling her abdominal cavity.

Hospital director Margo Vargas Lazo tells the BBC that the calcified fetus was “large and developed,” and had probably been there at least 50 years!

The AFP reports that the woman wasn’t experiencing any pain because of it, and notes that the fetus was roughly seven months along when it died. The condition is called “lithopedion,” and happens when a fetus dies and calcifies outside of the womb. Lazo tells the Efes news agency in Chile that this case is “extraordinarily rare,” reports the Independent.

A study published in 2000 in the Sao Paulo Medical Journal says it happens in just 1.5% to 1.8% of the abdominal pregnancies that occur—and the incidence of those are 1 in 11,000. There have been less than 300 cases in 400 years of world medical literature according to the study. Two-thirds of the diagnoses happened in women over 40, with the “period of fetus retention” ranging from four to 60 years.

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As with other cases, the Chilean woman was unaware of the presence of the fetus. Given her age, doctors sent her home a few hours later without performing an operation to remove it, so she’ll likely leave the world with her unborn baby inside her.

Source: Newser