PHOTO: AFP
Doctors have discovered a 50-year-old calcified foetus inside the body of an elderly Chilean woman.
The woman arrived at a hospital in the city of San Antonio after a fall. Doctors discovered the foetus after an X-ray test was performed on her. The foetus weighs around 2 kilos (4.4 lb) and is believed to have died during pregnancy inside the woman’s abdomen and outside the uterus.
It may not be possible to remove the foetus due to the woman’s age who has now been sent home and appears to be at least 90 years old, reports BBC.
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Hospital director Margo Vargas Lazo, while speaking to a Chilean news agency, described the foetus as large and developed occupying the woman’s entire abdominal cavity.
The Hospital Director also told a Chilean news agency that the discovery is "extraordinarily rare".
The phenomenon is known as ‘lithopedion’ or stone baby which occurs when a foetus dies during pregnancy and is calcified as a result of a defence mechanism of the mother’s body.
One in 11,000 pregnancies develop into a lithopedion, and many women remain unaware of it due to their bodies shielding itself from the foetus treating it as a foreign body.
According to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the earliest known case of lithopedion was discovered in 1582, during the autopsy of a 68-year-old woman.
This article originally appeared on Independent.
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