Doctors at the Larissa General Hospital in Greece examined a girl that was suffering from stomach pains and found that her embryotic twin was the cause of those pains.
Surgeons examined the girl and removed a growth they later found to be an embryo more than two inches long.
“They could see on the right side that her belly was swollen, but they couldn’t suspect that this tumor would hide an embryo,” hospital director Iakovos Brouskelis said, as quoted by the Associated Press.
The phenomenon, called “fetus in fetu,” is a very rare congenital condition with a reported incidence of one in 500,000 live births. The condition involves the presence of a fetus enveloped inside its twin.
Reports indicate that this happens in 1 out of every 500,000 sets of twins, with one twin absorbing the other twin in the womb.
Neither the girl nor her family name has been released at the request of the parents and she has made a full recovery.
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