Fetus in urp Fetu

Joshua

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A nine-year-old girl who went to hospital suffering from stomach pains was found to be carrying her embryonic twin, doctors in central Greece said Thursday. Doctors at Larissa General Hospital examined the girl and surgically removed a growth they later discovered was an embryo about six centimeters (more than two inches) long. “They could see on the right side that her belly was swollen, but they couldn’t suspect that this tumor would hide an embryo,” hospital director Iakovos Brouskelis said. The girl has made a full recovery, he said. Andreas Markou, head of the hospital’s pediatric department, said the embryo was a formed fetus with a head, hair and eyes, but no brain or umbilical cord. Markou said cases where one of a set of twins absorbs the other in the womb occur in one of 500,000 live births. The girl’s family did not want to be identified, hospital officials said.

This happened in Chile, a year ago, supposedly:

SANTIAGO, Chile – A boy has been born in Chile with a fetus in his stomach in what doctors said was a rare case of “fetus in fetu” in which one twin becomes trapped inside another during pregnancy and continues to grow inside it. Doctors carried out a scan on the boy’s mother shortly before she gave birth on Nov. 15 2006 in the southern city of Temuco and noticed the 4-inch-long fetus inside the boy’s abdomen. It had limbs and a partially developed spinal cord but no head and stood no chance of survival, doctors said.

And in India, a year ago:

Sanju Bhagat’s stomach was once so swollen he looked nine months pregnant and could barely breathe. Living in the city of Nagpur, India, Bhagat said he’d felt self-conscious his whole life about his big belly. But one night in June 1999, his problem erupted into something much larger than cosmetic worry. An ambulance rushed the 36-year-old farmer to the hospital. Doctors thought he might have a giant tumor, so they decided to operate and remove the source of the bulge in his belly. Mehta said that he can usually spot a tumor just after he begins an operation. But while operating on Bhagat, Mehta saw something he had never encountered. As he cut deeper into Bhagat’s stomach, gallons of fluid spilled out — and then something extraordinary happened. “To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside,” he said. “It was a bit shocking for me.” “He just put his hand inside and he said there are a lot of bones inside,” she said. “First, one limb came out, then another limb came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws, limbs, hair.” Inside Bhagat’s stomach was a strange, half-formed creature that had feet and hands that were very developed. Its fingernails were quite long. “We were horrified. We were confused and amazed,” Mehta said.

It’s called Fetus in Fetu.

Fetus in fetu (or fœtus in fœtu) is a developmental abnormality in which a fetus gets enveloped inside its twin and an entire living organ system with torso and limbs can develop inside the host… A fetus in fetu can be considered alive, but only in the sense that its component tissues have not yet died or been eliminated. Thus, the life of a fetus in fetu is inherently limited to that of an invasive tumor.