A baby girl was born in Israel with the embryo of her twin inside her stomach, in an medical rarity that occurs in once in half a million births.
The “fetus-in-fetu” occurred at a hospital in the southern Israeli town of Ashdod.
The Times of Israel reported:
Checks and ultrasounds in the late stages of the pregnancy had already identified that the girl’s stomach was enlarged, and following her natural birth doctors carefully examined her and confirmed that there was something inside the newborn.
She was immediately given a battery of further examinations including ultrasounds and an X-ray.
“We were surprised to discover that it was an embryo,” Omer Globus, director of neonatology at Assuta, said.
The report then added a team of the medical center’s top experts carried out the operation, eventually removing two similar sacs from the girl’s stomach.
“We think that there was more than one there, and we are still checking that,” Globus said.
He stressed the remains were not a fully formed embryo, but rather an embryo that only partially developed. Doctors were able to see some bones and a heart, he said.
“But it did not look like an embryo as you imagine it,” he said.
The operation was successful and the baby is expected to recover fully, Globus said.
According to Globus, such occurrences can only happen very early in the pregnancy when an embryo can enter a cavity. “The fetus inside partially develops but does not live and remains there,” he said.