Rare surgery extracts parasitic twin from toddler’s stomach

CAIRO – 25 December 2017: A large medical team at Abu Al-Reesh University Hospital conducted a rare pediatric surgery extracting a parasitic twin from a 2-year-old child bloated stomach.

Under the Chairmanship of Dr. Ayman Husain A. Sattar, Professor of Pediatric Surgery, the operation was conducted successful for the child who was diagnosed with foetus in fetu (FIF), a one-in-a-million case which occurs due to an error in fetal formation.

Mahmoud Mahmoud, the toddler whose stomach was swollen, was struggling to eat or drink anything and was constantly crying as a result of the growth in his abdomen.

Doctors initially thought Mahmoud had a large cyst and were astonished to find the growth in his stomach as a result of enveloping his unborn twin in utero. After he was diagnosed with FIF, the doctors immediately carried out the surgery professor remove the mass.

"Mustafa Mahmoud is a two-year-old child. He was diagnosed with a very rare case, only 200 hundred cases ever reported worldwide; occurs due to the formation of another fetuses inside the uterus but instead of adhering to the uterus wall they form inside the child," according to Dr. Heba Taher, a pediatric surgery professor at Abu Al-Reesh University Hospital and a member of the medical team that performed the surgery, in an exclusive press statement for Egypt Today.

Taher added that the surgery was complicated and need to be very precise as the tumor was spotted behind the child's stomach and completely attached to the pancreas. He said, "We had to remove and detach the organs from the fetus without injuring them."

Taher stated that the surgery was successful and the child was discharged from the hospital.

The medical team, Abu El Reesh University Hospital, 25 December 2017-Egypt Toda