Medics were baffled when an 84-year-old woman went to hospital with belly pain and they found a 40-year-old mummified foetus in her abdomen.
The unnamed woman from Durango, Mexico, had gone to a public health clinic in the city complaining of belly pain.
After carrying out tests, doctors were stunned to find she was carrying a decades-old mummified foetus in her abdomen.
Astonishingly, medics believe the remains had been inside the OAP for more than 40 years.
The Mexican Social Security Institute has not confirmed the events, which were reported by multiple local media outlets.
Professionals believe they are dealing with an extremely rare phenomenon called a lithopaedion – a calcified dead foetus.
It occurs most commonly when an unborn baby dies during an abdominal pregnancy and is too large to be reabsorbed by the body.
The foetus calcifies on the outside as part of a foreign body reaction, shielding the mother’s body from its dead tissue and thereby preventing infection.
An abdominal pregnancy is a rare type of ectopic pregnancy where the embryo or foetus grows and develops outside the womb in the abdomen.
Experts say the elderly woman’s foetus had mummified in the fortieth week of pregnancy after failing to develop normally.
When the unborn baby was conceived around four decades ago, it is unlikely the expectant mother received proper prenatal care.
What makes this case even more remarkable is that throughout the woman’s life, her condition had never caused her health issues.
This makes her a rarity among the roughly 300 examples of lithopaedia ever recorded in history.
Local media did not report if the woman underwent surgery.
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Story By: William McGee, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash
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