Mexican Grandmother Visits Hospital for Stomach Pain... "A Dead Fetus Inside My Belly"

MRI Reveals Approximately 40-Week-Old Lithopedion in Womb
Abdominal Pain Unrelated to Lithopedion... "No Surgery Planned"

An 80-year-old woman in Mexico visited a hospital due to abdominal pain and discovered a fetus that had died in her womb 40 years ago.

Photo of a 73-year-old Algerian woman who has lived with a sebaceous cyst for 35 years.
[Photo by The Sun capture]

According to foreign media including the Spanish daily El Pa?s on the 30th (local time), a woman identified as A (84), living in Durango, central-west Mexico, experienced severe abdominal pain and underwent an MRI scan at a hospital, which revealed that a fetus about 40 weeks old, miscarried 40 years ago, was still inside her abdomen.

Unaware of her pregnancy, A reportedly said she was shocked and could not believe that there was a dead baby inside her body.

Dr. Alejandro Sanchez, who treated A, explained, "The fetus captured on the MRI was quite large," and added, "The fetus in the abdomen was already in a mummified state."

In cases like A’s, the immune system recognizes the deceased fetus as a foreign substance and forms a calcium-rich wall around it, causing the dead fetus to harden inside the body without being expelled or dissolved outside the uterus. This mummified fetus, when further hardened by calcification, is called a 'lithopedion.'

The hospital added that since it was an ectopic pregnancy, A might not have been aware of her pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancy refers to a pregnancy in which the fertilized egg implants outside the normal location, such as in the fallopian tubes, ovaries, abdominal cavity, or cervix.

Fortunately, the severe abdominal pain A experienced that day was diagnosed as a simple stomach upset.

However, the hospital deliberated on how to handle the fetus in the abdomen. Some argued that surgery was necessary to remove the mummified fetus, but the medical staff decided against surgery, considering A’s advanced age and the fact that the fetus was unrelated to her abdominal pain.

Dr. Sanchez said, "Considering that the grandmother is in her 80s and that the fetus in her abdomen has not posed a significant threat to her health for 40 years, we concluded that not performing surgery was in her best interest."

Meanwhile, according to the British Medical Journal, cases of lithopedion have been recorded in medical literature since the 10th century and are extremely rare, with only about 290 cases worldwide.

In March of this year, a 50-year-old woman in the United States who had carried a lithopedion for nine years died from malnutrition.

Although the woman knew the fetus inside her had died, she endured criticism for causing the fetus’s death and chose not to deliver it, living with it inside her. At the time of examination, she also showed signs of intestinal obstruction but, fearing surgery, did not take any action and ultimately died from severe intestinal obstruction and malnutrition.

In December 2021, a 73-year-old woman living in Algeria was found to have carried a seven-month-old lithopedion inside her for 35 years. Like the previous case, she had no symptoms until she suddenly experienced abdominal pain and was diagnosed with a lithopedion during an examination.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.