Doctors discover unborn 50-year-old fetus inside 92-year-old woman
Director of the hospital dubs the case “extraordinarily rare"
By Shai Williamson | Daily Buzz – Tue, 23 Jun, 2015, Source
Doctors in Chile have discovered a 50-year-old fetus inside a 92-year-old woman’s abdomen.
After suffering a nasty fall, the woman was admitted to a hospital. That’s where doctors learned via X-ray that she was carrying a decades-old, 4.4 lbs fetus, the BBC reports.
The rare phenomenon, known as a lithopedion, is the result of a fetus dying during pregnancy and becoming calcified.
Marco Vargas Lazo, the director of the hospital, called the case “extraordinarily rare.”
The fetus, he said, was large and developed, occupying all of her abdominal cavity.
According to reports, there are only 300 known cases of “stone babies” in the world.
The study states that the chance of “abnormal pregnancy” is one in 11,000, with lithopedion occurring in 1.5% to 1.8% of those cases.
After looking at all of the recorded cases, the study found two-thirds of the diagnosis happened in women over the age of 40. The “period of fetus retention” ranged from four to 60-year-old women.
The 92-year-old did not have the slightest idea that she was carrying a calcified fetus for more than half of her life, although she did note that the fetus was nearly seven months along when it died.
Doctors say they have sent the woman home and have no plans to remove the fetus due to the woman’s age and because she said that she has not experienced any pain or discomfort associated to its presence.
The first-ever reported case of a lithopedion was found in a 68-year-old woman from Sens, France. It was believed to be around 28 years old.