Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Killer Sister

A 1-year-old girl from China is waiting to have an operation after doctors discovered she was carrying her parasitic twin.

Kang Mengru left doctors baffled after her belly became enlarged, The Sun reported.

They carried out a CT scan to discover the cause of the growth and found a fetus inside her. They believe it is her parasitic twin.

While the condition is very rare, Dr. Manny Alvarez, managing editor of health at FOXNews.com, said it is possible that's what this child is "carrying."

"There are multiple varieties of parasitic twins," said Alvarez. "In some cases you could have some sort of merging body parts... like an extra leg or sometimes you have an abnormal formation of the head when you have two brains."

In this instance, Alvarez said from looking at a picture of the girl, you can clearly see that it’s a large abdominal mass that could potentially be an embryonic remnant of a lost twin.

"This could be a type of parasitic twin called fetus-in-fetu," he said. "What you find is that you have an encapsulated tumor-like formation inside the body, which contains fetal parts."

Mengru is now waiting for an operation to have the fetus removed, according to the report.

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