Newborn baby’s twin discovered growing inside of her stomach by baffled doctors
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A newborn baby girl left doctors baffled when they discovered her twin was growing inside her.
The super rare condition, known as fetus-in-fetu, happens only around once in every 500,000 births, medics believe.
The girl was born earlier this month at Assuta Medical Center in Ashdod, Israel.
The hospital said that medics had alerted in the late stages of pregnancy that the unborn girl’s stomach was enlarged.
After she was born naturally, she was carefully examined and ultrasound scans confirmed there an embryo inside the baby, the Times of Israel reports.
During the first ten weeks, the embryo develops a brain, heart, basic facial features, arms and leg buds.
But it is tiny – around the size of a rubber on the end of a pencil.
Omer Globus, director of neonatology at Assuta, said the embryo was not fully formed but had “bones and a heart”.
He said: “It did not look like an embryo as you imagine it. We were surprised to discover that it was an embryo.”
A team of the hospital's top experts operated to remove the embryo and found two similar sacs in the girl’s stomach.
It suggests potentially there were once triplets growing in the mother’s womb.
Mr Globus added: “We think that there was more than one there, and we are still checking that.”
The condition occurs in about 1 in 500,000 live births and less than 200 cases have been reported in medical literature, a 2019 British Medical Journal paper claims.
The abnormality is mainly seen in newborns.
However, there have been seven cases reported where the condition is not found until the person is over 15 years old, with the BMJ paper describing an adult woman with the condition.
Mr Globus said: “It happens as part of the fetal development process when there are cavities that close during development and one of the embryos enters such a space.
“The fetus inside partially develops but does not live and remains there.”
Fetus-in-fetu is a parasitic twin that is completely enclosed inside the body of the healthy twin, according to Healthline.
This is when one twin stops developing but is physically attached to its other twin.
Although the underdeveloped twin has died, it ends up sharing a blood supply with its twin and embeds onto or inside its body.
It can go undiscovered at birth and even when found, thought to be a tumour.
Both the girl and her mother, who has three other children, have already been sent home.
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