An 81-year-old woman lived for 56 years with a “stone baby” in her stomach (4 photos)

An elderly lady from Brazil came to the hospital complaining of abdominal pain. As a result of the scan, doctors discovered a calcified fetus called lithopedion in her abdominal cavity. It turned out that the fossilized embryo had been there for more than fifty years.





81-year-old Daniela Almeida Vera died a day after surgery to remove the “stone child” at the Ponta Pora hospital in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

An abdominal scan was performed after the patient was admitted to Ponta Pora Hospital with a generalized infection. She was brought there from another hospital located near her home after she sought help for a urinary infection.



Before the discovery of lithopedion, doctors suspected the woman of oncology. After scanning and talking with the patient, they concluded that she had been carrying a dead fetus in her body since an ectopic pregnancy that occurred at the age of 25.

The operation was performed on March 14, and the next day the woman died while in intensive care.



Daniela, who came from an indigenous tribe and lived in a settlement near Brazil's border with Paraguay, is survived by seven children and 40 grandchildren. One of her daughters told the local press:

“She was elderly and we were indigenous. She did not like going to doctors and was afraid of the equipment used to perform tests. We are in a state of shock and have a lot of sadness. She was our mother and protector and now she's gone and we feel lost."

And Daniela’s son added: “She didn’t want to go to the doctors because she was afraid she had a tumor. She just took medication to make the pain go away.”



Last March, a woman died in the US from severe malnutrition after lithopedion blocked her intestines for nine years. A 50-year-old Congolese woman came to the United States as a refugee and went to the hospital complaining of abdominal cramps, indigestion, and gurgling after eating. The patient believed that her condition was due to a spell cast on her by someone in Tanzania. She died after refusing surgery.

Incredible photographs published in 2021 showed the moment doctors discovered a “stone baby” in the womb of an elderly woman in Algeria. A 73-year-old woman carried a fetus weighing 2 kg and seven months old for 35 years. She had a good quality of life and was not harmed by the unborn child.

This rare occurrence most often occurs when the fetus dies during an ectopic pregnancy and, being too large to be reabsorbed by the body, becomes calcified. This is how the mother's body reacts to a foreign body, protecting itself from dead tissue and preventing infection.

An article published in 1996 in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine states that only 290 cases of lithopedia have been documented in the medical literature. The earliest known lithopedion was found in an archaeological excavation at the Bering Pit on the Edwards Plateau in Kerr County, Texas, and dates back to 1100 BC.