Kudos! Calcutta Medical College doctors remove rarest of rare foetus

Pratima Bag was admitted to Calcutta Medical College hospital with a stomach ache that was refusing to die down. Several tests including ultra-sonography did not help doctors to understand her ailment. It was then that one doctor suggested a pregnancy urine test that came positive. But the foetus could not be located in the uterus of the mother and she was having normal periods. That’s why 25-year-old Bag did not realise she was pregnant!

Doctors were in a fix. They went for a 3D scan and were aghast to find the foetus with hands and legs developing within the digestive organs of the mother. Such cases happen one in 10 million and if not removed pose a threat to the mother’s life. Since there is no placenta, the child takes nutrition through a complicated procedure from the walls of the mother’s digestive organs like stomach and small intestine. Last week a team of doctors under Professor Tapan Naskar performed the rare surgery and removed the 5-month-old foetus that was posing a severe threat to the life of the mother. If it is a primary abdominal pregnancy then in the whole world it will be the 26th such case!