In a rare case, as many as eight fetuses were found in the abdomen of a 21-day-old baby during an operation in a private hospital here, doctors said.

The size of the fetuses range from three centimetres to five centimetres and they were settled inside a cyst in the abdomen, Dr Md Imran, who performed the surgery, said, as reported by NDTV.

What is Fetus-In-Fetu?

The operation was successful and the child’s condition is normal.

In medical terms, it is called fetus-in-fetu (FIF), a rare entity in which one malformed vertebrate fetus is enclosed within the body of its twin, according to a journal of National Library of Medicine.

“As per the papers and journals available so far, one fetus was reported in most of the FIF cases. Case of eight fetuses has not been reported from anywhere yet,” Dr Imran claimed. He added that FIF is very rare and it occurs in one in five lakh live births.