After six months of pregnancy, Keri McCartney, a woman from Laredo, Texas (USA), went for an ultrasound and was terrified to discover a dangerous mass growing abnormally on her baby’s tailbone.
This mass was obstructing the blood supply to the fetus and posed a life-threatening risk.
A fetal surgery to save the baby was urgently planned.
After administering anesthesia, surgeons at Histon Children’s Hospital opened Keri’s uterus and delivered about 80% of the fetus’s body outside the womb, keeping only the head and shoulders inside the mother.
They quickly removed the mass and then placed the baby back into the uterus, closing the amniotic sac around her.
During the procedure, the surgeons were astonished to find that what they had believed to be a tumor was actually a parasitic twin attached to the baby’s body. This was a rare form of twinning in which one fetus develops upon the other.
Ten weeks after being placed back into the womb, the baby girl was born perfectly healthy and was named Macie Hope McCartney.