ISLAMABAD - Doctors at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) removed a foetus from a two-month old baby girl after a successful three-hour long operation on Saturday.
The three-and-a-half month old foetus was girl’s twin brother or sister. Dr Zaheer Abbassi who headed the team of doctors that operated the patient, said it was a twin pregnancy in which one baby was normal but the other could not grow. ‘The case is rare and it’s also called ‘foetus in fetu’ in medical terminology. “In a similar case I had removed twin foetus from a baby five years ago,” he added.
According to details, the patient Amna, daughter of Lakhmir Khan hailing from Rawlakot, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), was born with enlarged tummy and had loose motions and vomiting which was conservatively treated in AJK by the local doctors but none of them could diagnose the disease so she was referred to the Children’s Hospital, PIMS.
Amna is a fourth child of the couple of cousin marriage having previous siblings normal. The mother of the patient, Aasma, is 29 years old and having a history of thyroid surgery and had previous six spontaneous abortions due to unknown reasons. Father of the patient himself is a physiotherapist doctor.
Amna had undergone ultrasonography, X-rays, and blood tests at PIMS revealing it as a case of abdominal tumour.
A team of paediatric surgeons including Prof Zaheer Abassi, Dr Khurrum Arif, Dr Pervaiz, Dr Amra and anaesthetists Dr Rehmat Ali and Dr Suresh operated on the patient that took three hours to complete.
The tumour was plastered to intestines, spleen and kidney. All the organs of the child were saved successfully during the operation and the tumour turned out to be ‘another baby of two months’ gestational age having head, hairs, trunk, all four limbs and amniotic feeding sac but this baby was dead as it was in stunted age growth.
Dr Waseem Khawaja, spokesperson of PIMS, informed that the patient has been shifted to ICU where her condition was stated to be stable. Parents have been counselled in detail and they are extremely happy and obliged to the doctors of Paediatric Surgery Department and Children’s Hospital, PIMS, as the operation was successfully done within three days of the admission in the ward.