Rare operation in Armenia: surgeons removed parasitic twin from 2 months old’s body

December 18, 2014  17:24

A rather rare operation was performed in one of Armenia’s hospitals several days ago: the surgeons removed a parasitic twin from the belly of a 2 months old baby. Surgeon Sahak Arakelyan who had performed the operation told NEWS.am Medicine about its details.

The strange mass in the babies belly was discovered during pregnancy, yet it didn’t cause any problems when the baby was born. After a month the mass began to grow, and MRI scan showed a rather big heterogeneous mass that had to be removed.

Judging by how fast the mass grew, the doctors first thought it was an aggressive form of cancer, but during the operation, they found out that it actually was fetus in fetu, a rare condition that has been defined as the presence of one of the twins in the body of the other. Some others call this mass a teratoma, a highly developed one that resembles a fetus. This condition is estimated to occur in 1 in 500,000 or even in 1,000,000 live births.

During the operation that lasted for 3.5 hours, the mass was totally removed. The malformed fetus had legs, fingers and even guts, but it had no head.

Doctor Sahak Arakelyan told NEWS.am Medicine that this was the first time he had encountered such a condition, and neither have his senior colleagues seen anything like that in their practice.

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