A 50-year-old woman died of acute malnutrition in the United States, due to a calcified fetus she had been carrying in her womb for nine years. This case was relayed at the beginning of March in the scientific journal BMC Women’s Health and spotted by our colleagues from South West. This rare phenomenon called lithopedion begins with an ectopic pregnancy that does not come to term. The fetus not being expelled, it calcifies.
It all started in Tanzania, in a refugee camp that this woman of Congolese origin had joined following fleeing her country. She had raised a family of eight children there, three of whom died shortly following birth. But her ninth pregnancy went badly. The camp health center had found that the fetus was no longer viable and had asked the patient to wait for it to be expelled.
Fetus dead following 28 weeks
The Congolese then went to the United States, without having undergone any medical intervention. After several years, she presented to the emergency room with “symptoms of abdominal pain and discomfort, chronic dyspepsia and gurgling sensation”. The analyzes revealed that she had a calcified fetus, a lithopedion. The fetus was twenty-eight weeks old when it ceased to be nourished by the mother.
Doctors offered surgery to rid the mother of her dead fetus, but she refused, thinking she had been the victim of a spell in Tanzania. “Unfortunately, she died 14 months following her resettlement from severe malnutrition, amid recurrent bowel obstruction and persistent fear of seeking treatment,” the study reads.
Turned to stone
The occurrence of a lithopedion is extremely rare. Fewer than 300 cases have been reported since an example was discovered in France in 1582, the study says. In detail, fetal calcification occurs “in regarding 1.5 to 1.8% of ectopic pregnancies and in 0.00045% of all pregnancies”.
The retention interval is estimated “from 4 to 60 years”. When “the fetus is too large to be reabsorbed, the immune system considers it a foreign body and induces a deposit of a calcium-rich substance, thus turning the fetus into stone”.