Nine-Year-Old Girl Bears Twin’s Foetus

A NINE-year-old girl in Greece had been carrying around her undeveloped twin’s foetus in her stomach since birth.

Medics in the Greek city of Larissa found the two inch-long foetus when the young girl was brought to hospital, complaining of a stomach ache.

“They could see on the right side that her belly was swollen, but they couldn’t suspect that this tumour would hide an embryo,” says Iakovos Brouskelis, the hospital’s director.

Surgeons removed the “tumour”, which was a foetus with a head, hair and eyes, but no brain or umbilical cord, and the girl has made a full recovery.

It apparently occurs in one of 500,000 live births.

• In 2003, doctors in Kazakhstan treated seven-year-old Alamjan Nematilaev, who complained that he felt something moving inside of him. When surgeons operated, they found his “twin”, which had a head, hair, genitals and a partially-formed face.

• In 2006, a Chilean boy was born in the southern city of Temuco with a four-in-long-foetus inside his abdomen.

• And in 2003 Sanju Bhagat’s stomach (pictured) was swollen. Dr. Ajay Mehta of Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai said: “Because of the sheer size of the tumor, it makes it difficult [to operate]. We anticipated a lot of problems.”

A cut:

“To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside,” he said. “It was a bit shocking for me.”

Mehta had removed the mutated body of Bhagat’s twin brother from his stomach…

Anorak

Posted: 17th, May 2008 | In: Strange But True Comments (5) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink