Michelle Castillo, CBS News
An 82-year-old woman complaining of stomach pain wasrevealed to have a 40-year-old fetus inside her body.
Multiple news agencies reported that when the Colombian woman when to a doctor in Bogota, they found a lithopedion, ora calcified fetus, inside her stomach.
Also known as a "stone baby," a lithopedion happenswhen a mother has a pregnancy that doesn't develop in the uterus, according to an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.Typically the fetuses are more than three months old and found in theabdomen. The fetus lacks circulation, which leads to extra calciumbuildup.
Because itis so large, it cannot be absorbed by the body. Instead the fetus becomes calcifieduntil it is removed.
According to the Irish Independent, about one out of every11,000 pregnancies will turn into a lithopedion. Most women do not know whathappened or that they were even pregnant, so it can remain inside them forquite some time.
An article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine explainedthat the first known case of a lithopedion was found in 1582 in a 68-year-oldwoman from Sens, France. The fetus was estimated to be about 28 years old.
The Colombian woman was reportedly transferred to a different hospital to havethe fetus surgically removed.
