36-year-old skeleton of dead baby found inside Indian woman
36-year-old skeleton of dead baby found inside Indian woman
Doctors in India have removed a baby’s skeleton from inside its mother, nearly four decades after the unborn infant died.
Kantabai Thakre became pregnant in 1978, aged 24, but doctors warned the ectopic pregnancy had little chance of success, reports UK-based daily The Independent.
Terrified of an operation, the young mother fled home and sought treatment for the pain in a small clinic near the village where she lived.
After a few months the pain subsided and Thakre was convinced she had been cured.
However, last week the pains returned and Thakre, now 60, visited doctors in the central Indian city of Nagpur.
Having found a lump on the lower right side of her abdomen, doctors at the NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences were concerned about cancer but an MRI scan revealed the hard mass was in fact the skeleton of her unborn child.
Dr Murtaza Akhtar, speaking to the Mail Online, said: “After she went for an MRI and CT scan we could make out that it was actually a matured skeleton encapsulated in a calcified sac.”
Doctors have now removed the skeleton.
"We believe this could be the longest case on record at 38 years", Dr Mohammad Yunus Shah added.
The previous longest ectopic pregnancy, when the foetus develops outside of the womb, was a Belgium woman who carried the remains of the failed pregnancy for 18 years.