Please be aware: This text discusses subject material which may be upsetting to some readers.
The human physique is a wierd and great factor. It is also smooth and squishy and weak to all method of threats, each from outdoors the physique and inside.
One extraordinarily uncommon safety technique arises in response to a really uncommon and in addition unlucky set of circumstances.
Now and again, a fertilized human egg begins to develop right into a fetus outdoors the uterus, inside the mom’s belly cavity. Referred to as an belly being pregnant, that is very harmful, and probably deadly.
In a really small share of belly pregnancies, the physique is ready to defend itself when the fetus dies – by turning the fetus to ‘stone’.
It isn’t truly stone, however metallic. The mom’s physique permeates the fetus with the metallic mineral calcium, a significant part of bones, in a course of referred to as calcification. This safely quarantines the fetus from the mom’s personal physique, and thus protects her from sepsis.
The official time period for such a calcified fetus is lithopedion – from the traditional Greek for ‘stone child’ – and the phenomenon is so uncommon, at the very least by way of it being found, it is solely been documented a number of hundred instances over the course of human historical past.
What makes it significantly outstanding is that, as a rule, the stone child can stay undetected within the mom’s physique for years – even a long time, remaining undiscovered till properly previous menopause, or, in some instances, loss of life.
The mom may even gestate and beginning different infants, utterly unaware of the calcium-encrusted fetal stays.
A lithopedion is assumed to happen in 1.5 to 1.8 % of belly pregnancies, however nowhere close to that many are documented.
Stomach being pregnant is a type of ectopic being pregnant, during which the fertilized embryo implants itself outdoors the uterus. The commonest type of ectopic being pregnant takes place within the fallopian tube, however the ovary or the cervix are additionally identified areas.
Roughly 2 % of all pregnancies are ectopic; of these, an estimated 0.6 to 4 % are belly. Though they’re harmful, and the fetus often does not survive, an belly being pregnant can, in uncommon instances, ship a reside child, sometimes prematurely.
A 2023 examine estimates 208 million pregnancies happen worldwide yearly. Primarily based on that determine, and the decrease estimates for the charges of belly pregnancies and lithopedions, 374 pregnancies ought to lead to a stone child yearly.
In line with a 2019 paper, fewer than 300 lithopedions have been documented throughout 400 years of human historical past.
There could also be instances that go undetected. A number of lithopedions have been present in historical burial grounds, with the earliest identified case relationship again to 1100 BCE.
In line with a 1949 evaluation of the phenomenon, during which 128 instances have been analyzed, the typical age at which a mom is found harboring a lithopedion is 55.
In 1996, a case report detailed the invention of a lithopedion in an 85-year-old affected person who had efficiently delivered 4 different infants previous to what her docs described as “an incomplete abortion” on the age of 41 and went on to reside for many years not realizing that components of the fetus remained in her stomach.
A 2000 case report detailed the phenomenon in an 80-year-old affected person. A case report printed in 2014 describes a lithopedion in a 77-year-old affected person who believed she had by no means been pregnant in any respect. And a 2016 case report documented the case of a lithopedion in an 87-year-old deceased girl throughout a autopsy post-mortem.
Due to rising requirements of gynecological and obstetric care, consultants imagine that the phenomenon is changing into much more uncommon. Stomach pregnancies usually tend to be caught early, and handled earlier than the fetus develops to the purpose of calcification.
