50-Year-Old Fetus Likely To Stay In Woman’s Abdomen Due To Surgery Risks

Chilean doctors made a surprising discovery when they found a calcified 50-year-old fetus in a 92-year-old woman. After a recent fall, the woman, Estela Melendez, went to the Claudio Vicuna Hospital for an X-ray, and the fetus was discovered. Melendez claims she was told by a doctor over 50 years ago that she had a tumor, but it wasn’t removed.

According to a translation provided by Reuters, Melendez’s son, Luis, said, “When they took the X-ray of her, they realized it was a fetus inside of her.”

The 50-year-old fetus, which weighs just over four pounds, is from a rare condition called lithopedion which occurs when a developing fetus dies during pregnancy and becomes calcified outside the uterus, allowing it to remain in the body. As the Inquisitr previously reported, Melendez’s fetus died in the third trimester. The gestational age of the fetus is estimated to be seven months old.

Melendez’s son expressed to Reuters his concerns for his mother’s health.

“Imagine all those years. I don’t know how something like this could affect her body.”

The Efe news agency reported that Marco Vargas Lazo, director of the Claudio Vicuna Hospital, called the case “extraordinarily rare” and said the fetus was “large and developed and occupied all of her abdominal cavity.”

As mentioned earlier, lithopedion is a rare condition. There have only been around 300 reports of other women who were unaware of the presence of a fetus in their bodies until decades later.

In 2013, Dr. Kim Garcsi from the University Hospitals Case Medical Center In Cleveland, told ABC News that lithopedion can occur when the fetus does not get enough blood and dies, but the body has no way to expel the fetus.

Garcsi said, “Most of the time people find these and (sometimes) even after they’re found and don’t do anything about it because they’re totally asymptomatic.”

In the case of an 82-year-old woman in Colombia, she went to a hospital in Bogota complaining of abdominal pain. She ended up having surgery to remove a 40-year-old fetus that had been found inside her abdomen.

Chilean doctors have sent 92-year-old Estela Melendez home. They told the Chilean press they aren’t planning to remove the 50-year-old fetus due to the risks of operating on a patient of Melendez’s age. The fetus also isn’t causing Ms. Melendez pain, which is another factor doctors took into account.

With so few cases of lithopedion recorded, is the discovery of a 50-year-old fetus a shock?

[Photo by Fotopress/Getty Images]