In a rare case of 'foetus in foetu,' a growing 3.5kg foetus was removed from a one-year-old girl's abdomen.
A resident of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, Nisha had a malformed 3.5kg foetus growing inside her stomach, which was feeding off her blood supply and nutrition and suppressing her organs. However, in order to save her the doctors performed a surgery at a private hospital in Mettupalayam.
How did this virgin 1-year-old grow a foetus?
The doctors at Sri Ganapathy Krishna Hospital, where Nisha was treated say that she always had a protruding stomach, but it was not something her parents Raju and Sumathi were worried about.
"They might not have gone for their scans regularly or towards the end. So doctors may have missed it," he said. "It was only after the child began having issues breathing and having food and the stomach had grown to a noticeably abnormal size did they go to a private doctor in Erode," said Dr D Vijayagiri added.
This private doctor then directed the parents to Dr Vijayagiri, who earlier thought she had a cyst.
"I too believed that it was a cyst or tumour till the ultrasound and scan showed that there were bony areas, calcified region and a teratoma-like structure (a tumour containing tissues and organs). That was when I suspected that it was a foetus-in-fetu and quickly looked up some literature," said Dr Vijayagiri, who finally performed the surgery.
"However, it was only when I removed the structure, could I confirm that it was a fetus. Though it has some bones, a pathology study is what can reveal the organs formed so far," he said
What is foetus-in-foetu?
In the medical condition of foetus-in-foetu, a parasitic twin resides inside the host twin. This usually occurs due to improper placement during the develop of the foetus.
In Nisha's case, during her own birth, her mother had two foetuses, one of which got attached to Nisha's abdomen and starting growing inside of her.
This was a tricky surgery because...
The foetus removal was a complex task because of the following complications:
- The girl's left kidney was completely attached to the tumour
- The organs like the pancreas, a portion of the spleen and left side of the colon were attached to the foetus
- The blood vessels were splayed around the structure
"So we had to remove and detach the blood vessels and move the organs away from the fetus without injuring them. Once the fetus was removed, we manually placed all the organs in the places where they should have originally been," said the doctor, while speaking to a daily.
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