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A pensioner has died in Brazil after undergoing surgery to remove an ultra-rare “stone baby” she had carried inside her for around 56 years.
Daniela Almeida Vera
Doctors had detected the calcified fetus, called lithopedion, during a scan after Daniela complained of stomach pain.
The ultrasound was carried out after she was rushed to Ponta Pora Hospital for a widespread infection.
She initially went to another hospital closer to home after seeking help for a urinary tract infection.
Daniela Almeida Vera, 81, from Brazil, died a day after undergoing surgery to remove an ultra-rare “stone baby” she had carried inside her for about 56 years.
This rare phenomenon most often occurs when a fetus dies during an abdominal pregnancy and is too large to be reabsorbed by the body and becomes calcified.
Before the ‘stone baby’s’ shock discovery, medical experts suspected she was suffering from cancer.
They concluded that Daniela had been carrying the dead fetus in her body since her last pregnancy more than fifty years ago.
Daniela, from an indigenous tribe and living in a colony near the border between Brazil and Paraguay, leaves seven children and 40 grandchildren.
Her operation took place on March 14 and she died the next day while still in intensive care.
One of his six daughters, Rosely Almeida, 21, told the local press: “She was old and we are indigenous.
“She didn’t like going to the doctor and she was afraid of the equipment used to perform the tests.”
She also suggested that her mother could have carried her “stone baby” for longer than the 56 years doctors say because of the pain she had felt since her first pregnancy which she said had ” ‘feeling like a baby was moving in her belly’.
Her only son, Vanderlei Avalo Almeida, added: “She didn’t want to go to the doctor because she was afraid she had a tumor.
“She was just taking medication to make the pain go away.”
Further tests have now been ordered on the calcified fetus to find out more.
Rosely said: “We are in shock, there is a lot of sadness. She was our mother and the only one to protect people and now she is gone and we feel lost.
Doctors had detected the calcified fetus, called lithopedion, during a scan after Daniela complained of stomach pain.
Last March, it emerged that a woman had died of severe malnutrition in the US after a lithopedion blocked her intestines for nine years.
The 50-year-old Congolese woman had arrived in the United States as a refugee and went to the hospital complaining of stomach cramps, indigestion and a gurgling sensation after eating.
Doctors writing in the Journal of Medical Case Reports said the patient believed her condition was linked to a spell someone in Tanzania had cast on her. She died after refusing surgery.
Incredible footage released in 2021 shows the moment doctors discovered a ‘stone baby’ in the womb of an elderly woman in Algeria.
Reports at the time said the 73-year-old carried the fetus, weighing 4.5 pounds and aged seven months, for 35 years. She would have had a good quality of life and would not have been harmed by the unborn child.
This rare phenomenon most often occurs when a fetus dies during an abdominal pregnancy. It is too large to be reabsorbed by the body and calcifies externally as part of a foreign body reaction, protecting the mother’s body from dead tissue and preventing infection.
A 1996 article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine indicated that only 290 cases of lithopedion had been documented in the medical literature.
The first known lithopedion was discovered during an archaeological dig at Bering Sinkhole, on the Edwards Plateau in Kerr County, Texas, and dated to 1100 BC.