This is amazing!

I'm stunned to read of what doctors found when they treated a newborn baby in Colorado for what they thought was a brain tumor.

Three-month-old Sam Esquibel has been hailed a 'miracle baby' after he survived the operation on what doctors believed was a large tumour, picked-up during an ultrasound on Sam's heavily pregnant mother Tiffnie Esquibel.




Sam was born after an induced labour, allowing surgeons in Colorado to operate quickly.
Foot

But what followed was unbelievable.

'A lot of us who have been in practice long enough like to think we've seen everything,' neurosurgeon Dr Paul Grabb said.

'The foot quite literally popped out of the tumour. It made me stop operating, since I'm not used to seeing feet in the brain.




'This would be a one-in-a-lifetime finding in the operating room.'

When Dr Grabb finished surgery at Colorado Springs Memorial Central Hospital, he and other members of the surgical team told the Esquibels what he had found.

'They just looked at us and said, "It's just remarkable. It's for the books what we found".'

Tiffnie Esquibel said she was equally stunned.

'We didn't know what to think when they told us what they found.'

Dr Grabb eventually removed the tumour, which was found to contain other partially formed body parts, including a thigh and a hand.

The body parts were found to be non-cancerous. Monthly tests on Sam have shown that it is not growing back.

Now, a vertical scar on his right temple, above the ear and just where his hairline ends, is the only sign that Sam is a medical marvel.




Dr Nancy Snyderman, chief medical editor for NBC News, which interviewed the family, said that the tumour could be one of two rare birth conditions.

The first and more common is a teratoma, which is a mass that contains various incompletely formed body parts that may include hair and teeth.

'I've seen quite a few teratomas in my life, in the neck, in the chest, in the abdomen,' Dr Snyderman said.

'Never one in the brain.'

She said that the other condition, of which fewer than 100 have ever been reported in the world, is called fetus in fetu. The term literally means "fetus in fetus" and occurs when one twin engulfs the other in the womb.

The engulfed twin feeds off the other as a sort of parasite and continues to grow and develop. Unless removed, it usually proves fatal.

Doctors who have reviewed Sam's case tend to think the tumour was a teratoma.

Dr Snyderman said that Sam would surely become a case study in a little-understood medical phenomenon.

The only noticeable side-effect of the operation is that Sam tends to fix his gaze towards the right side of his head where the tumour was.

More information and pictures at the link.

That just blows my mind . . . to think that Sam's unborn twin's body parts ended up in his brain!

Peter