
A large lump in a teenager's stomach turned out to be her own "twin" inside her abdomen. Above, an image of the lump before the teen's operation.
The 17-year-old went to the doctor after developing a lump in her abdomen that had been gradually increasing in size over the last five years, according to the report, published Aug. 12 in the journal BMJ Case Reports. The teen told doctors that she sometimes experienced abdominal pain and a feeling of fullness, even when she had not eaten much food.
A CT scan revealed that the teen had a large mass in her abdomen that appeared to contain multiple bones "resembling the shape of vertebrae, ribs and long bones," the authors wrote.
Doctors diagnosed the teen with fetus in fetu, a condition that is estimated to occur in only about 1 in 500,000 people worldwide.
The new case is even more unusual because it was diagnosed in a teenager, whereas most previous cases have been found in infancy or early childhood, the authors said. What's more, the mass appears to be the largest one ever discovered in a case like this, they said.














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