Pakistani doctors performed surgery yesterday on a 2-month-old girl to remove two fetuses that had developed inside her since she was in her mother’s womb.
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| A doctor provides oxygen to two-month-old Nazia after she underwent major surgery to separate the two fetuses. (Photo: AP) |
Baby Nazia is currently under special observation following a two-hour surgery at the Children’s Hospital of the Pakistan Medical Science Institute in the capital, Islamabad.
Zaheer Abbasi, head of the pediatric surgery department and the lead surgeon, stated that this is the first case of “fetus in fetu” he has encountered in Pakistan—a condition where one fetus develops inside another fetus in the womb.
“Having two fetuses developing within another fetus is extremely rare,” Abbasi mentioned, adding that he is unsure of the cause of this abnormality. “Essentially, it is a case of triplets, but two fetuses were growing inside the remaining one.”
The infant hails from Abbottabad, located about 48 kilometers north of Islamabad. She is the fifth child of a woman in her 30s. The doctor reported that the surgery successfully removed the two underdeveloped fetuses, which together weighed a total of 0.9 kg and had died at around four months of age.
Cases of “fetus in fetu” have also been reported in various parts of the world. A 2000 report from the American Journal of Pediatrics described these occurrences as rare, estimating an incidence of approximately 1 in 500,000 births.
T. An
