In Colombia, a young woman gave birth to a baby who had a parasitic twin in her abdomen. The child was operated by Caesarean section and is now in good health. The fetus, on the other hand, had no chance of survival.
This is a birth that took place in circumstances that were, to say the least, dramatic. In Colombia last month, a 33-year-old woman gave birth to a child who then had to be operated on to remove the fetus from his abdomen. If this phenomenon called that of the “parasitic twin” is rare, it is not without precedent.
Seven months after the start of her pregnancy, Monica Vega meets Dr. Miguel Parra-Saavedra, a specialist in high-risk pregnancies in Baranquilla, on the advice of her doctor. The latter fears a cyst in the liver of the fetus. Wrongly. Thanks to a 3D/4D ultrasound, Miguel Parra-Saavedra soon realizes that the fluid-filled space actually contains a tiny infant, supported by a separate umbilical cord drawing blood from the intestine of the larger twin. Also called “fetus in fetus“, this malformation is in fact due to a fetus which develops inside another when it is absorbed by its twin.
After having warned the main interested party who is struggling to recover from the shock, the specialist contacts a local television channel which then begins to follow Monica. On February 22, when the latter was 37 weeks old, the doctors decided to induce the delivery by caesarean section for fear that the “internal” twin would crush the organs of the healthy twin. Born Itzamara, 3 kilos. The next day, the doctors operated on her to remove her twin by laparoscopic surgery (surgical technique minimally invasive where the surgeon performs an operation on the abdomen through small incisions).
Walnut-sized fetus with no chance of survival
If this operation is extremely risky, it goes well and the little one survives. “She has a small scar on her abdomen but she’s a normal baby now. Except that the whole world is talking about her”, explains Doctor Miguel Parra-Saavedra quoted by the New York Times.
In contrast, the fetus, the size of a walnut, had an umbilical cord, two arms, two legs, a tiny head but had no heart or brain. So he had no chance of survival as the Colombian show shows “Los Informantes” (in Spanish).
Sometimes a fetus inside a baby is diagnosed as a teratoma, a type of tumor that can contain bone, muscle, and hair. But if a DNA test takes place at the present time, Dr. Parra-Saavedra is certain that this was an identical twin from the same egg. This extremely rare condition is called heteropagus or parasitic twin.
A pathology which concerns 1 case out of 500,000 births
It develops around 17 days after gestation “when the embryo flattens out like a disc and then folds in on itself to form the elongated foetus. Doctors believe that in extremely rare cases, twin embryos do not divide only partially and the bigger wraps itself around the smaller”, explains the New York Times.
As amazing as it is, this story is not isolated. Worldwide, 200 cases of this congenital malformation have already been reported by the press. Moreover, according to a Hong Kong study, it would concern 1 case out of 500,000 births. The first time we heard about this pathology was in the 1800s from a British medical journal. According to journalist and doctor Marc Gozlanthe terminology of “fetus in fetus” was used “for the first time in 1800, then defined in 1953 as a mass containing a vertebral axis most often associated with other organs”.
In 2010, according to facts reported by the Hong Kong Medical Journal, a Chinese girl was even born with two embryos in her abdomen. These were parasitic triplets. Until today, the last case of “fetus in fetus” had been reported a few months ago: in India, a baby was born with a 7cm fetus in the womb who already had legs, arms and a brain. Luckily, we were able to remove it from birth, as for little Itzmara. Unfortunately, this is not always possible…
See below Los Informantes (in Spanish):
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