Routine examinations after a fall have revealed that a 92-year-old Chilean grandmother had carried a mummified fetus weighing nearly two kilograms for at least half a century. “It is a fortuitous discovery which had no connection with the causes of the examination of the patient”, declared an official of a hospital in the city of San Antonio (Chile) at the microphone of the Chilean radio station Radio Bio Organic.
The nonagenarian was rushed to hospital by her family after a fall. It was during a check-up x-ray of the hips that the fetus was discovered. This one seemed to have a development of about 7 months and weigh two kilos. For unknown reasons, the fetus mummified without causing any particular discomfort. For physicians, it is very likely that this is a ectopic pregnancy during which the fetus has developed on contact with the abdomen. As the organs are not at all suitable for pregnancy, the fetus could not develop properly and was mummified.
This unexpected discovery, however, did not surprise the old woman, who claims to have fallen pregnant when she was 17 years old. “As the baby was dead, the hospital proceeded to ‘cleanse’ my uterus,” said the old woman. “Then another doctor told me I had cancer and was going to die within three days, and there was nothing they could do. But I always knew that the fetus was there because in the end they did nothing to remove it from me. »But if this nonagenarian lived relatively well with her mummified fetus, she still faced some health concerns. “She has one leg shorter than the other because of the weight and she cannot urinate properly,” the older woman’s brother told a BBC report.
However, the specialists let the nonagenarian return home without the fetus having been removed, the operation being too risky.
In August 2014, a similar case was observed in a 60-year-old Indian woman, who had kept a fetus in her body for 36 years. She became pregnant when she was 24 but was unable to carry her pregnancy to term as the fetus had grown outside the uterine cavity.
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