A rare case of term viable secondary abdominal pregnancy following rupture of a rudimentary horn: a case report Bhandary Amritha1, Thirunavukkarasu Sumangali*1, Ballal Priya1, Shedde Deepak1 and Rai Sharadha2

Introduction: Abdominal pregnancy is a rare event, but one that represents a grave risk to the health of the pregnant woman. An abdominal pregnancy is defined as an ectopic pregnancy that implants in the peritoneal cavity. Early abdominal pregnancy is self-limited by hemorrhage from trophoblastic invasion with complete abortion of the gestational sac that leaves a discrete crater. Advanced abdominal pregnancy is a rare event, with high fetal and maternal morbidity and mortality. Case presentation: This is a case report of a 22-year-old primigravida with an abdominal pregnancy from a ruptured rudimentary horn. She was diagnosed as a case of term pregnancy with placenta previa with a transverse fetal lie and cervical fibroid and was prepared for an elective cesarean section. Intra-operatively, a live term female baby was extracted from the peritoneal cavity and it turned out to be an abdominal pregnancy from a ruptured rudimentary horn of a unicornuate uterus, which is a very rare condition. Mother and baby were in good condition after such a catastrophic event. Conclusion: This case illustrates a rare obstetric condition which can be a severe catastrophic condition leading to maternal mortality and morbidity. It is imperative for every obstetrician to have in mind the possibility of abdominal pregnancy, although rare, especially in pregnant patients with persistent abdominal pain and painful fetal movements. Introduction An abdominal pregnancy is defined as an ectopic pregnancy that implants in the peritoneal cavity. Early abdominal pregnancy is self-limited by hemorrhage from trophoblastic invasion with complete abortion of the gestational sac that leaves a discrete crater. Advanced abdominal pregnancy is a rare event, with high fetal and maternal morbidity and mortality. It still remains a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge for every obstetrician and usually occurs after tubal abortion or rupture. Very rarely, it occurs following rupture of a rudimentary horn. We report a rare case of a term viable abdominal pregnancy following rupture of a rudimentary horn. Published: 29 January 2009 Journal of Medical Case Reports 2009, 3:38 doi:10.1186/1752-1947-3-38 Received: 8 January 2008 Accepted: 29 January 2009 This article is available from: http://www.jmedicalcasereports.com/content/3/1/38 © 2009 Amritha et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.