18cm in the skull of a one-year-old child found 'Twin Fetal'
Jul 11, 2024
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According to the British media Daily Mail, Professor Xu Wei Chin's team, an anesthesiologist at Beijing University International Hospital in China, recently published a case paper of such a patient in the `American Journal of Case Reports.'
According to the paper, a child born by caesarean section at 37 weeks of pregnancy was discharged from the hospital because his head was larger than the average of newborns, but no significant abnormalities were found.
A year later, the child was admitted to Beijing University International Hospital because his head was swollen and did not develop normally.
The child was unable to defecate, was unable to stand properly, and could not speak other than the word 'Mom'.
In response, doctors performed X-rays and CT scans of the child's head, and found a lump in the skull with a diameter of 13cm slightly larger than that of a baseball.
There were long pieces of bone embedded in this mass.
Doctors decided to perform surgery to remove the lump, and performed a partial skull resection.
Inside the mass was a surprisingly immature fetus.
The fetus had early forms such as spine and bones, mouth, eyes, hair, forearms, hands, and feet, and was about 18 cm long.
The one-year-old appeared to have undergone 'severe brain tissue compression' due to this. There were also symptoms of spinal fluid accumulating in parts of the brain. It was because the fetus was weighing on the cerebrovascular in the skull.
However, the child who underwent removal surgery did not wake up and was declared dead two weeks after the operation.
Medical staff explained that this case is a rare case of 「Vanishing twin」 (Vanishing twin), with a probability of birth of about one in 500,000 people.
In addition, only 18 cases have been reported in the skull so far.
The medical staff said "We don't know the exact cause of this disease yet" and "It occurs when identical twins formed by dividing two eggs during intrauterine development are not completely separated".
It can then be attributed to environmental pollution, genetics, low temperatures, and exposure to pesticides during pregnancy," he added.
bellho@sportschosun.com
