Twin sister found in one-year-old Chinese girl’s head

In China, a girl underwent surgery to remove the remains of an embryo, her twin sister, from her skull, Liter.kz reports with reference to Dailymail.

The girl’s mother had a normal, uncomplicated pregnancy, but at 33 weeks of gestation, doctors used ultrasound to detect some abnormalities in the developing child’s skull. However, the birth was standard, and at 33 weeks of pregnancy, the woman gave birth by cesarean section. The newborn’s head was slightly larger than average. The size of the skull probably did not bother the doctors, so the Chinese woman was discharged home.

A year later, the woman went to the International Hospital of Peking University because the girl’s head had grown even larger. The child suffered from urinary incontinence, it was difficult for her to stand, hold her head up, and the only word she could say was “mama.”

A head scan revealed that there was a 13cm long mass in the skull. Bones were seen inside the mass.

Doctors decided to perform surgery immediately and remove the mass. They were able to extract a white capsule from the child’s skull containing a thick brown liquid and an immature embryo. The fetus had a spine, bones, and the beginnings of a mouth, eyes, hair, forearms, hands, and feet. It was 18 centimeters long.

The operation caused severe complications, due to which the child could not wake up, so he was transferred to a life support system. After two weeks of frequent convulsions, the girl’s relatives made the difficult decision to disconnect her from the system. The child died.

What happened to the girl is considered an extremely rare medical condition, known in science as fetus in fetu (embryo in embryo). During pregnancy, one fetus can absorb its twin. This anomaly affects about one baby in every 500,000 births. Only 18 cases have been recorded where it occurred inside the skull. In 80 percent of cases, the absorbed fetal tissue gets stuck in the abdomen, where doctors have a good chance of removing it without causing harm to the patient. In other cases, it has been found in the baby’s mouth, scrotum, or tailbone.

For example, in 2015, Chinese doctors successfully removed a fetus found in the scrotum of a 20-day-old baby.