October 27, 2002 RABAT, Morocco (AP) -- A 75-year-old Moroccan woman who went to the hospital complaining of stomach pains had been carrying a calcified fetus — a so-called "stone baby'' — for 46 years, doctors who operated on her said.
Presenting their findings at a news conference Friday, doctors said they removed a fully fossilized, 7.7-pound fetus which they believe had been lodged in the woman's abdominal cavity since an ectopic pregnancy in 1956.
The findings of the operation, which was performed in June, were to be published in the October issue of Moroccan medical monthly "L'Evenement Medical,'' said Chafferdine Ouazzani, head of the obstetrics and gynecology department of Rabat's Souissi Hospital.
Ouazzani said doctors believe the fetus had reached its full term and died due to complications with the woman's ectopic pregnancy, a potentially dangerous condition where the fetus develops outside the uterus.
In June, the woman, whose name was not disclosed, went to doctors in the capital, Rabat, complaining of pain in her stomach and lower back.
Ultrasound tests revealed a suspicious mass in her abdomen, which X-rays then confirmed was a fetus, Ouazzani said.
The woman, who was described as an illiterate villager from outside the town of Benslimane, 50 miles southeast of Rabat, told doctors she had last been pregnant in 1956. At that time, she was advised to have a Cesarian child birth but refused, saying she preferred to deliver the baby naturally.
Doctors said they believed the woman was unaware her pregnancy had been ectopic. She was unable to deliver the child, but never attempted to have the fetus removed.
In 1995, the British medical journal, The Lancet, reported that Austrian doctors had discovered a fully calcified, 7 1/2-month-old fetus that had been inside a woman's womb for about 60 years.
That fetus was discovered in an X-ray after the 92-year-old woman went to a hospital in Vienna suffering from senile dementia and pneumonia. She died a week after being admitted.
Stone babies occur in about one in 250,000 pregnancies, but rarely remain inside the mother for such a long time, The Lancet report said. The body naturally forms calcium on dead tissue that is too large to be absorbed into the body.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
