Woman pregnant for 36 years!!!

Doctors in India  removed a skeleton of a foetus that had been inside a woman for 36 years in what is said to be the world's longest ectopic pregnancy.

The 60-year-old woman became pregnant at 24 years old but suffered a miscarriage because the foetus had been growing outside of her uterus.

The woman, from a poor rural area of central India, was "scared" of having an operation at the time to remove the remains of the foetus, and instead sought medication for the pain at a local clinic.

The pain subsided, but it returned years later, forcing the woman to seek medical help in a city hospital.

"She came to us complaining of pain in the abdomen," said Akhtar, head of surgery at the N.K.P. Salve Institute of Medical Sciences in the city of Nagpur.

"This is a case in which the woman got pregnant outside the uterus. She told us she was pregnant in 1978 and it was a mature pregnancy," he said.

Doctors identified a lump on her lower right abdomen and was worried it was cancer -- but tests and scans revealed a calcified mass.

"Once we saw the scans, our first reaction was 'what are we dealing with'? It was actually a matured skeleton encapsulated in a calcified sac," Akhtar said.

"A 60-year-old woman with a foetus lying in her abdomen for 36 years is a medical marvel. It's something we had never heard about."

The doctors searched medical literature and discovered a woman in Belgium who had retained the remains of a foetus for 18 years following an ectopic pregnancy, the longest they could find on record.

An ectopic pregnancy occurs when the egg implants outside the uterus, usually in the fallopian tubes.

Doctors in Nagpur successfully performed surgery to remove the mass that was lodged between the woman's uterus, intestines and bladder.

Skeletal remains that were removed  included parts of a rib cage, leg and arm bones and sections of a skull, spine and pelvis.

"The woman was shocked when she first found out what had happened. But she is fine now and is recuperating," Akhtar said.

The  woman  refused to speak with media.

"As far as this case is concerned, it's the rarest of rare cases and very difficult to believe," Akhtar said.