Doctors in Chile were shocked to discover that a 90-year-old woman had been carrying a large calcified foetus for some 50 years.
The woman went to a hospital in the city of San Antonio after a fall. While performing X-ray the doctors discovered the foetus which weighed around 2 kg.
The foetus was large and developed and occupied the woman’s entire abdominal cavity, according to doctors who called the case “extraordinarily rare.”
Removal riskyDoctors do not plan to attempt to remove the foetus as the operation could be risky given the woman’s old age, according to media reports.
A lithopaedion or stone baby is a rare phenomenon in which a foetus dies during pregnancy and then becomes calcified outside the uterus.
Previous recorded cases have also involved women being unaware of the presence of the foetus until decades later. — PTI
