JERUSALEM, Aug. 3 — A 40-year-old Israeli woman underwent surgery to remove a fetus growing in her liver, an extremely rare ectopic pregnancy, the Wolfson Medical Center in central Israel said in a statement on Monday.
The woman went to the hospital with severe abdominal pain, shortness of breath, and internal bleeding. She thought she had experienced a normal menstrual period two weeks earlier, but tests showed she was about seven weeks pregnant.
The doctors first suspected a typical ectopic pregnancy, in which a pregnancy develops outside the uterus, but further ultrasound scans revealed that the embryo had implanted in her liver.
The hospital noted that this condition is especially dangerous due to the liver’s dense network of blood vessels, which significantly raises the risk of severe internal bleeding.
Surgeons carried out a minimally invasive operation to extract the fetus and a small portion of the affected liver tissue while successfully controlling bleeding.
The hospital reported that the surgery was successful, allowing for a faster recovery than a traditional open surgery.
The doctors added that the patient had no known risk factors for ectopic pregnancy, which occurs in about 1 to 2 percent of all pregnancies, with 95 percent of them developing in the fallopian tubes. (Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
