Fetus’ skeleton removed from woman 36 years after miscarriage

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

The 60-year-old woman became pregnant at the age of 24 but suffered a miscarriage because the fetus had been growing outside of her uterus, one of the doctors said.

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

Although the pain gradually subsided, it returned years later, forcing the woman to seek medical help in a city hospital, Murtaza Akhtar said.

"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 felt a lump on her lower right abdomen and feared it could be cancer - but further tests and scans revealed a calcified mass.