Colombia doctors find possible twin inside baby
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian doctors trying to remove a suspected tumor from the abdomen of a 4-month-old baby instead discovered a well-formed fetus -- possibly the baby's twin. Staff at the Rafael Urbina clinic in Cali, 155 miles southeast of Bogota, said Friday the rare discovery was made during an operation Monday on a baby boy with a swollen midriff. ``The child is recovering well, although he needed a blood transfusion after the fetus had been removed,'' a pediatric nurse at the clinic told Reuters. Doctors said it was the first case in Colombia of a medical condition known as ``fetus in fetus'' and one of less than 100 worldwide. ``You could see its feet, a slightly-deformed skull ... a poorly-defined face, back and genitals,'' Dr. Freddy Orozco, who took part in the operation, was quoted as saying by El Espectador newspaper Friday. ``It wasn't alive as such, its heart wasn't beating, but it did have live tissue because its hair was growing,'' he said. Doctors said the six-inch long embryo had survived by attaching itself to a vein within the baby's intestines. The most probable theory, they said, was that the fetus was a twin absorbed by the other inside the mother's womb.
