Boy Has Twin’s Body in Stomach
Email
Doctors will remove the partial body of a twin from 3-year-old Isbac Pacunda's stomach. Image credit: Karel Navarro/AP Photo
Doctors in Peru said they would operate today on a 3-year-old boy to remove the body of his would-be twin.
Isbac Pacunda has the body of his twin inside his stomach – bones, eyes and even hair on the cranium. Dr. Carlos Astocondor, a plastic surgeon at the Las Mercedes Hospital in Chiclayo, told the Associated Press that the partially formed fetus weighs about a pound and a half and is 9 inches long. He and a team of 12 doctors will surgically remove the tissue from the boy’s stomach today.
The condition is called fetus-in-fetu and happens in about one out of every 500,000 live births, Astocondor said. Although rare, these cases are not unheard of. In 2008, doctors removed a 2-inch embryo from the body of a 9-year-old girl in Greece. In 2006, doctors found a half-formed twin with limbs, genitalia, hair — even fingernails – in the swollen stomach of a 36-year-old Indian man.
The case spotlights the biological precision needed for twins to develop in the womb. Identical twins form when an egg splits in half right after fertilization. If the egg fails to fully separate, conjoined twins will form, sharing some portion of their bodies.
Dr. Jonathan Fanaroff, a neonatologist at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, told ABC News that some conjoined twins can live as “parasites,” relying on the body of the other for a blood supply and organ function. But for fetus-in-fetu, the body of one twin envelops the other during development.
“In this kind of situation, because it was inside the other boy, it wasn’t able to survive,” Fanaroff said.
Surgery to separate live, conjoined twins is extremely difficult and fraught with ethical complications. Fanaroff said the removal of Pacunda’s twin will likely be much easier.
Man Discovers He's a Woman at the Hospital 
Head Trauma, Behavior Problems Linked
Time is running out to claim both kids on his taxes. I hope he has his forms in order.
Posted by: Jimmy Rigsby | January 30, 2012 January 30, 2012, 1:23 pm
I certainly hope he isn’t planning to try for more kids after something like this. But chances are he’s a Catholic, so it’s almost a given.
Posted by: Arf40 | January 30, 2012 January 30, 2012, 3:43 pm
Why don’t they say abdomen instead of stomach? The stomach is a specific organ near the top of the abdominal cavity.
Posted by: Amy | January 30, 2012 January 30, 2012, 5:09 pm
How sad for this poor boy and sadder still that people posting here are so anal and find everything funny
Posted by: samhiguchi | January 30, 2012 January 30, 2012, 7:11 pm
Saying someone should not have kids again after this is essentially the same thing as saying someone should not have kids after a miscarriage. There is no genetic cause of something like this.
Posted by: Amanda | January 30, 2012 January 30, 2012, 7:12 pm
I had this condition, not to near this extent, when I was born. Its called fetus in fetu. My younger brother did not suffer from this at all.
Posted by: Chris W | January 31, 2012 January 31, 2012, 5:52 pm
Any birth defect – and that’s what this is, a mis-calculation of cells in the womb – that only occurs once in 500,000 births is not a reason to stop having children. Sheeeeeesh.
Posted by: Sheila | February 1, 2012 February 1, 2012, 4:20 pm
I’m surprised the GOP herd isn’t trying to out-rant each other about the right of the enveloped fetus to continue living, how the surgeons are murderers, etc. etc.
Posted by: Deb in FL | February 3, 2012 February 3, 2012, 6:04 pm
One of my sisters had what then was called a hair and tooth tumor and had it removed when it was discovered when she lost another baby that was in her womb. We were shocked as none of us had ever heard of such a thing. That was her first pregnancy and she went on to have 3 perfectly healthy children. She was a very slim girl and woman so this thing she had was not big enough to disfigure her in any way. Twins do run in the family and our mother had a set so knowing what we know now it is not that unusual.
Posted by: Gayla T | February 4, 2012 February 4, 2012, 6:28 pm
I wish more information had been given about the status of the absorbed twin. Is he or she a living entity. There are eyes. Does he or she see? Does he or she have brain function (think)?
Posted by: Janet Ma'ly | February 10, 2012 February 10, 2012, 10:45 am
Janet – you have to read the article and you will have your answers. 1. Fetus in fetu is when the twins from one egg (aka identical aka it would have to be a boy) don’t separate completely and one is then reabsorbed by the other twin. Fraternal twins are two separate eggs and i don’t think can be subject to this.
2. The article says that because the fetus was located inside the boy’s abdomen, he couldn’t grow and was not viable. Fetus in fetu ends with one surviving twin and the othe fetus not surviving. There is not a 3 year old child living INSIDE this boy’s abdomen. That is physically impossible. As it could not breathe or gain nourishment nor evacuate waste, one would assume that is obvious to the lay reader.
Posted by: Tal | February 11, 2012 February 11, 2012, 1:52 am
TAL- Thank you for explaining that one…I was busy slamming my head on my desk after reading Janet’s comments. Then, I cried a little for the lack of reading comprehension skills possessed by many.
Posted by: Lu | February 11, 2012 February 11, 2012, 12:56 pm
There have been cases of some people having 2 sets of DNA also. This would fall in the Identical twin category and they refer to it as “being one’s own twin”. Like the fetus in fetu and conjoined twins, it can happen that the surviving twin has the DNA of both. I know a girl who was born with 3 kidneys. Possibly she is her own twin. Some people are born with extra fingers and toes, and there’s the girl in India born with 4 arms and 4 legs.
Posted by: Steph | February 11, 2012 February 11, 2012, 9:13 pm
“…tissue…” Hey eugenists over at ABC News, they are not removing “tissue.” They are removing a dead baby. Just because the baby was never born doesn’t mean the baby never existed. How many of us could have a twin and never know about it because our mother’s body reabsorbed it because it wasn’t perfect? Shame!!!!
Posted by: TPatrick Henry | February 12, 2012 February 12, 2012, 8:22 am
Some of you need to read and stop being so damn ignorant. It says the baby did not survive because it was in the boy’s stomach. And some of u just need to shut up talking about the mother shouldn’t have no more children. What if it happened to u? Would u like her or other people to say the samething about u? Think about that????
Posted by: Lisa | February 12, 2012 February 12, 2012, 11:27 am