A baby boy had two other fetuses growing inside it in an extraordinarily rare case.
Last month, a 32-year-old woman in India visited her local hospital for a routine scan while 35 weeks pregnant.
Though her previous scans had come back normal, doctors discovered ‘an additional structure containing bones’ in the unborn baby boy’s abdomen.
Further testing revealed two other malformed fetuses inside the fetus’ abdomen.
The exceedingly rare phenomenon, dubbed ‘fetus in fetu,’ has only been recorded about 200 times in medical literature. It’s unclear how many of these involved multiple fetuses.
The woman delivered her son on February 1 at about 35 weeks pregnant, and doctors removed two fetuses, which had stopped growing at some point during the pregnancy, from the baby’s stomach.
According to local reporting, the mother and baby boy are healthy.
However, it’s believed the two other fetuses were too underdeveloped to survive.
An unnamed woman in India went in for a normal scan when doctors found her unborn son was carrying two other fetuses inside his abdomen (stock image)
The above scan shows the woman’s unborn son with two underdeveloped fetuses in his abdomen. While he and his mother survived the surgery, the two other fetuses were not viable
Dr Prasad Agarwal, who conducted the scan, told local media: ‘I was lucky and vigilant enough to notice something very unusual with this baby, grossly normal growing fetus with a few bones and a fetus-like structure in its abdomen.
‘It struck me immediately that this is not normal. It was “fetus in fetu,” one of the rarest cases in the world.’
It’s unclear exactly what causes fetus in fetu, though doctors know it generally occurs during development inside the womb as identical twins.
Identical twins result when a sperm fertilizes one egg that then splits into two separate embryos.
Doctors believe that in cases of fetus in fetu, the egg doesn’t separate fully.
One twin then gets stuck inside the other and may continue developing features like fingernails, hair and limbs.
In this case, the woman’s egg was likely trying to split into three and didn’t fully separate, resulting in one viable fetus and two fetuses in fetu.
Both fetuses in fetu in this instance developed hands and feet.
However, the fetuses are considered parasitic because they rely on the host to survive and don’t have fully developed vital organs. This means they are not viable and have to be terminated.
The case of fetus in fetu is shown in the above scan. The condition has only been reported 200 times, and the exact cause is unknown
The new case is one of the eight-in-10 in which the absorbed fetal tissue gets lodged in the abdomen, where doctors have a high chance of removing it without harming the mother or the baby.
Other times, it has been found in a baby’s mouth, scrotum, tailbone or brain.
For example, in 2015, Chinese doctors successfully removed a fetus that was found in the scrotum of a 20-day-old infant.
And in one case reported last year, a one-year-old girl in China suffered developmental delays and a larger than average head when doctors found a fetus growing inside her skull.
Scans revealed a five-inch mass in her skull, slightly bigger than a baseball. Embedded within the mass were long chunks of bone.
Though doctors were able to remove the fetus, the girl suffered severe brain damage and died less than two weeks later.
