Sometimes, in the medical community, doctors come across an anomaly that completely takes them by surprise.
It was in mainland China where a mother gave birth to a special baby girl. According to CNN, a team of Hong Kong doctors discovered an “extremely rare medical occurrence,” in what appeared to be a pair of fetuses inside the body of a newborn baby.
The news outlet explains that the fetuses were joined to a “placenta-like mass by umbilical cords.” Upon discovery, each of the fetuses had developed skin, four limbs, primitive brain tissue, a ribcage, and intestines.
The rare condition is called “fetus-in-fetu” and is estimated to happen once in every 500,000 births. According to a study published in the scientific publication Hong Kong Medical Journal, this has only been reported fewer than 200 times worldwide.
The baby girl in whom this condition was discovered weighed 9 lbs. when she was born and recovered well from the surgery that removed the mass of tissue. The doctors who studied this rare medical occurrence noted that there are “controversies” regarding whether the “two unusual entities” can be “classed as fetuses” or a very mature type of tumor called teratoma.
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CNN reports that there were no signs of this condition during the second trimester, but the mass was found during the mother’s 37-week scan.
To learn about this extraordinary medical event, check out the video posted by Wonderbot.
