Doctors in China have extracted a four-inch-long foetus from the skull of its one-year-old twin sister.
Doctors told reporters that the foetus had developed upper limbs, bones, and even fingernails, implying that it will likely continue to grow for months inside its sibling womb.
The fetus was discovered after the parents brought their daughter to the hospital for scans due to an enlarged head and motor neuron issues.
Dr. Zongze Li of Fudan University’s Huashan Hospital, who treated the girl, stated that “the intracranial foetus-in-foetus is proposed to arise from unseparated blastocysts.”
A fetus-in-fetus is a medical term for a rare phenomenon in which twins fuse in the womb and one develops physically inside the other.
The girl’s unborn sibling was pressed against her brain, according to CT scans.
According to doctors, the girl survived for a year after birth because she shared a blood supply with her sibling.
She was also suffering from hydrocephalus, a condition in which fluid accumulates deep within the brain, resulting in an enlarged head, extreme sleepiness, and seizures.
