Fetus Found Inside Stomach Of 40-Day-Old Child In Bihar. Check All About The Rare Medical Condition ‘Fetus in Fetu’

Fetus in fetu is a rare congenital anomaly. It is a condition in which malformed and parasitic fetus is located in the body of its twin.

Patna: A rare medical case has come to light in Bihar’s Motihari, were doctors found a fetus developing inside the stomach of a 40-day-old infant. The condition was discovered affected child was admitted to Motihari’s Rahmania Medical Centre, seeking treatment for bloating and discomfort in urinating. To find out the reason behind the bloating of the stomach and the stoppage of urine, doctors ran CT scan for the patient, and found that infact has a rare medical condition called ‘fetus-in-fetu”.

According to Dr Tabrez Aziz of Rahmania Medical Centre in Motihari, child’s surgery to remove the fetus has completed successfully. He said that the infant is now completely fine after surgery and has been discharged from the hospital.

“A rare medical anomaly has come to light where a fetus was seen developing inside the stomach of a 40-day-old infant. It is called fetus in fetu. The infant has undergone surgery, condition stable,” he told news agency ANI.

He said the phenomenon is extremely rare, and one in five lakh children are affected by it.

What Is fetus-in-fetu?

According to National Library of Medicine, fetus in fetu is a rare congenital anomaly. It is a condition in which malformed and parasitic fetus is located in the body of its twin. The anomaly was first defined in early nineteenth century. Despite its prevalence among infants and children, there have been reports of cases in which the anomaly had remained asymptomatic until later ages. This rare congenital anomaly was reported around 100 times since its first definition in the nineteenth century.

FIF was initially thought to represent a mature teratoma, according to another article by Pediatrics. H0wever, it has since been defined as a separate entity, distinguished by the presence of an axial skeleton with organized limbs and organs. Genetic studies suggest that this phenomenon occurs in monozygotic monochorionic diamniotic twin gestations when one twin is absorbed by the other during ventral folding of the trilaminar embryonic sac.