A MAN from China, who was born with two heads, complete with two scalps, two sets of teeth, and two tongues, was one of the first cases of parasitical twins.
Chang Tzu Ping, from a rural village in southwest China, was born with a condition called foetus in fetu, otherwise known as a parasitical twin – which caused his unborn twin to grow out of his face.
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Foetus in fetu is a rare congenital anomaly which sees a malformed and parasitic foetus start to develop inside the body of their twin.
Ping, for example, was born with a second mouth, another set of teeth, and a tongue, growing out of the side of his face.
Although his second mouth wasn’t exactly fully functional, Ping did have control over its movements – and it reacted in tandem to Ping opening his primary mouth.
The black mass on Ping’s face, situated just to the side of his second mouth, was found to have been his unborn twin’s brain.
Doctors also supposed that the mass growing out of Ping’s back was more remnants of his twin.
Ping spent the majority of his life living with the condition, choosing to work alone in the fields, largely unbothered by his second head.
Video footage from 1982 suggests that the only time Ping felt shame for his condition was after a failed arranged marriage.
Upon seeing him for the first time, on their wedding night, the woman called off the arrangement and Ping fled to the fields.
Many months later, Ping was discovered by an American surgeon.
After meeting with Ping and his family, the surgeon and an expansive medical team decided to take on the case and flew him out to the US.
An intense medical procedure saw the team struggle to remove the black mass, the second mouth and set of teeth.
But after several hours in the operating room, the team had succeeded.
The black mass and mouth were removed from Ping’s face and, although his right ear was disfigured, his general condition had significantly improved.
Although rare, there have been other cases of parasitic twins since Ping.
Back in 2019, doctors noticed that a Colombian mother had two umbilical cords during an ultrasound two months before she was due to give birth.
Mónica Vega’s unborn baby girl had absorbed the other foetus in the womb which had then attached to her via an umbilical cord.
Ms Vega’s doctors told her they needed to deliver immediately as they were worried the parasitic twin could grow and injure the developing baby’s organs.
She had an emergency C-section and named the newborn Itzmara.
Just 24 hours later, the baby girl underwent her own C-section to remove the mass, which had no heart or brain.
The operation was a success and doctors said Itzmara is expected to have no further complications, it was reported.
In a case report by the British Medical Journal in the same year, a 17-year-old Indian girl sought medical help over a stomach lump she’d had for the past five years that was increasing in size.
Read more on the Scottish Sun
Tests revealed that the lump contained “multiple teeth” and “hairs, mature bones and other body parts” from the teen’s parasitic twin she had absorbed in the womb.
Doctors successfully removed the mass, which measured more than 30cm in length and 16cm in width, and the patient made a full recovery.
What is a parisitic twin?
A parasitic twin, otherwise known as foetus in fetu, is an identical twin that has stopped developing during gestation, but is physically attached to the fully developing twin, known as the dominant or autosite twin.
The parasitic twin never completes development and rarely, if ever, do they have a complete brain or functional heart.
They usually don’t share organs with the dominant twin and can’t survive on their own.
In some cases, the dominant twin looks like a normally developed baby with extra limbs or unrecognisable protrusions.
Without treatment, this twin may develop severe health problems from the efforts of supporting the parasitic twin.
As they are so rare, researchers have a long way to go to understand how it fully happens.
Identical twins come from a single fertilized egg that splits in two shortly after fertilization. The result is two separate fetuses. If the egg fails to fully separate, the result is conjoined twins.
Sometimes, one of the fetuses is partially absorbed by the other in early pregnancy. The partially absorbed fetus stops developing and becomes parasitic. The other twin continues to develop normally and becomes dominant.
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