Fetus in fetu: Baby boy in India born carrying parasitic twin brother in abdomen
- 7 years ago
THANE, INDIA — Doctors in India got the shock of their lives after discovering a newborn baby boy was carrying with his own twin brother.
The anomaly was detected by a radiologist, who found a 7cm-long mass during an ultrasound of the then-pregnant 19-year-old mother, the Mumbai Mirror reported.
When the baby was born days later, another scan revealed that the mass behind the newborn’s stomach contained a small fetus with a tiny brain, head, and limbs.
The rare abnormality is called fetus in fetu, and occurs when one fetus wraps around and envelops the other, while still sharing a single placenta. The enveloped fetus lives on inside its sibling, feeding off like a kind of parasite.
It can get implanted in the neck, the tailbone, sometimes even the skull.
The host baby can also die if continuously robbed of nutrition, but in this case, surgeons intervened and successfully extracted the parasitic twin.
The baby is recovering, and will have a great story to tell once he gets older.
The anomaly was detected by a radiologist, who found a 7cm-long mass during an ultrasound of the then-pregnant 19-year-old mother, the Mumbai Mirror reported.
When the baby was born days later, another scan revealed that the mass behind the newborn’s stomach contained a small fetus with a tiny brain, head, and limbs.
The rare abnormality is called fetus in fetu, and occurs when one fetus wraps around and envelops the other, while still sharing a single placenta. The enveloped fetus lives on inside its sibling, feeding off like a kind of parasite.
It can get implanted in the neck, the tailbone, sometimes even the skull.
The host baby can also die if continuously robbed of nutrition, but in this case, surgeons intervened and successfully extracted the parasitic twin.
The baby is recovering, and will have a great story to tell once he gets older.