Doctors Discover 36 Year Old Baby Skeleton Inside Indian Woman

After nearly four decades after her unborn infant died, doctors in India have removed a baby’s skeleton from inside its mother. An Indian woman Kantabai Thakre became pregnant in 1978 at the age of 24. Doctors said the ectopic pregnancy (a complication of pregnancy in which the embryo implants outside the uterine cavity) had little chance of success.

Thakre said she was terrified of an operation, so she fled home and sought treatment for the pain in a small clinic near the village she lived. The pain subsided after a few months and she was convinced that she had been cured. 

But last week, the pains returned, Thakre now 60, visited doctors. They found a lump on the lower right side of her abdomen and the doctors at the NKP Salve Institute of Medical Services were concerned about cancer.

After an MRI scan, it was revealed that the hard mass was the skeleton of her unborn child. The head of surgery Dr Murtaza Akhtar told The Times of India that “It was after the patient underwent a MRI that the doctors could make out that the mass was in fact a child’s skeleton”.

The skeleton has now been removed. After searching medical records, the team of doctors believe this may be the longest ectopic pregnancy on record. According to reports, the previous longest ectopic pregnancy, when the foetus develops outside of the womb, was a Belgium woman who carried the remains of the failed pregnancy for 18 years.

It was not revealed whether Thakre had other children as it may have been discovered long before now.