When fertilized eggs implant anywhere other than the womb , it is considered an ectopic pregnancy . They affect about 1 out of every 50 pregnancies and can potentially be life history - forbidding . Most foetus that stem from ectopic pregnancies are not practicable , though very rare exception exist .

Last calendar week , The Times of Indiareported that a 60 - twelvemonth - old woman received surgery to hit a fetus from an ectopic maternity she had back in 1978 . For a period of two months lead up to the surgery , the woman had been quetch of abdominal pain . She had a palpable hard mass , which was initially suspected to be cancerous , so she straight off undergo mental imagery and examination . The imagination expose that the mass was n’t Crab ; it was the calcified skeletal cadaver of a fetus .

” It was after the patient undergo a MRI that the doctors could make out that the mass was in fact a child ’s skeletal frame , " Murtaza Akhtar , head of surgery , toldThe Times of India .

The woman got pregnant when she was 24 year previous , though the pregnancy was ectopic and she unsurprisingly go wrong . At the meter , doctors in the city had assure her she needed operation immediately . She got frightened and went home to her village , encounter treatment there .

" We ask for a detailed aesculapian history and the patient ’s chum tell us that in 1978 she was pregnant and had some complication , " the head of the operative team , B. S. Gedam , toldThe Times .

It is strange on the dot how far along the pregnancy was before it spontaneously aborted . Live Sciencereports that this could be a casing of stone baby , or lithopedion . Depending on the sizing of the foetus , the female parent ’s organic structure might not have been able to pronto reabsorb the embryonal tissue . Rather than risk contagion , a layer of calcium instead begins to form around the foetus , in ordination to protect the mother . This is rare in more developed arena , as most ectopic fetuses are removed surgically .

This is likely the long recorded prison term span a woman has carried around ectopic foetal corpse . The doctor found a case from Belgium in which a adult female undergo surgical process to get rid of the skeleton after 18 days , making this font of 36 year altogether unprecedented .

[ lid tip : Live Science ]