NAGPUR: In 1978, 24-year-old Sharda (name changed) from Madhya Pradesh had a pregnancy in which the baby was growing outside the uterus.

Thirty six years later, the bones of the unborn child were removed from her body through surgery by a team of doctors at Nagpur’s NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences (NKPSIMS).

This could be the longest that the remains of an ectopic pregnancy were retained in the body of a woman.

Sharda, now 60, had come to the OPD of Lata Mangeshkar Hospital, attached to NKPSIMS last week. She complained of a consistent pain in the abdomen since the last two months.

Doctors felt a lump on the lower right side of her abdomen, and feared it was cancer. The presence of a lump was confirmed by sonography.

The CT scan revealed the lump was made of hard, calcified matter. It was after the patient underwent a MRI that the doctors could make out that the mass was in fact a child’s skeleton.

The team searched for medical literature on similar cases and found a Belgian woman had retained the remains of an ectopic pregnancy for 18 years, the longest period they could find on record.

"We asked for a detailed medical history and the patient’s brother told us that in 1978 she was pregnant and had some complications," said Dr BS Gedam.

"Doctors from a city-based hospital had told her that foetus might have died and she would have to undergo an operation. We gathered she got scared at the prospect of surgery and so went away to her village without undergoing the operation."

He said the patient claimed that after a few months of treatment at the village health centre, the she was relieved.

What the team found after operating Sharda was a mass containing a matured skeleton encapsulated in a calcified sac. This mass was found between the uterus, the intestines and urinary bladder, densely stuck to all the organs.

"The amniotic fluid that protects the foetus might have been absorbed and the soft tissues liquefied over time with only a bag of bones with some fluid remaining. For the last few months, the patient was experiencing pain and urinary problems with fever,” said another surgeon Dr Mohammad Yunus Shah.

He said this was happening as the mass was compressing the urinary system, thus compromising the functioning of the kidneys. One of the ovaries of the patient was also missing.