Amazing: A 35-year-old fossil embryo was discovered in the body of a 73-year-old

The fetus that was accidentally discovered in the woman's abdomen did not develop properly, and remained at a weight of about two kilograms and at the age of seven months, all without the mother knowing.

Years later he was discovered entirely by chance.

Here are all the details

Walla!

health

28/12/2021

Tuesday, 28 December 2021, 11:45 Updated: 13:02

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An equally amazing story comes from Algeria, where a 73-year-old woman discovered quite by chance that she was carrying a fossilized fetus in her body.

This rare condition occurred in her abdomen for decades without her even noticing.

The woman, whose name was not released, carried the fetus, which weighed just over two kilograms and at the age of seven months, for 35 years, during which she enjoyed a good quality of life and her health was not harmed by the presence of the fetus inside her body.

The woman had previously undergone medical treatment but doctors did not detect the fossilized fetus.

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To the full article

This phenomenon has a name - Lithopedion - a descriptive term derived from the Greek lithos, meaning stone, and payion, child) and it is formed when pregnancy takes place in the abdomen and not in the uterus.

When pregnancy eventually fails, usually because the fetus does not have enough blood supply, there is no way for the body to "get rid" of the fetus.

As a result, the body transports the embryo to the calcification process and turns it into a 'stone' through the same immune process that protects from any foreign object discovered in the human body.

Dr. Kim Graxie, of the University of Cleveland University Medical Center, said the calcification of the tissue protects the mother from infection, but it also means the fossilized baby can remain in the womb without being identified for decades.

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According to a 1996 article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, only 290 cases of lithopedion have ever been documented in the medical literature.

The earliest is that of a 68-year-old French woman, Madame Columb Chetri by name.

After an autopsy on her body after her death in 1582, she was found to be carrying a developed stone baby in her abdominal cavity.

Chetri, whose stomach was "swollen, hard and sore all her life," carried her stone child for 28 years.

Back in 2013, an elderly Colombian woman was shocked when she consulted a doctor about pelvic pain and was told the pain was caused by a 40-year-old ‘stone baby’.

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