Doctors say a Russian woman lived to be 80 years old with a needle in her brain

• An 80-year-old Russian woman has been living with a needle in her brain since she was born, doctors said.
• The Sakhalin Ministry of Health wrote that it discovered the one-inch needle sometime this year.
• They believe she was the victim of a botched infanticide at the hands of her parents during times of famine.

A one-inch needle was discovered in the brain of an 80-year-old woman in Russia, local health officials said Monday.

The Ministry of Health of the Sakhalin Region wrote in A Share Telegram Local radiologists found the three-centimeter-long needle during an X-ray examination.

She did not mention exactly when doctors made this discovery, but indicated that it would happen in 2023.

The needle was found in the left parietal lobe of the woman, whose name was not mentioned, according to the ministry.

Officials said the needle had been in her brain since birth, and doctors believe her parents tried to kill her when she was an infant.

In times of war, some desperate parents insert a needle into a soft spot on a newborn’s head, where the bones in the skull have not yet fused, the ministry wrote. She noted that that spot – the fontanelle – would then close and block the needle, even though the infant would die.

“Such cases were not uncommon during the famine years,” the ministry added.

The woman is now 80 years old, and was likely born around 1943.

But she survived an attempt to kill her baby, and has never suffered from needle headaches, according to the Sakhalin Ministry of Health.

The ministry wrote that doctors said they would not remove the needle for fear that surgery would worsen her condition.

She added that she is undergoing medical follow-up by a doctor, and that her health is not in danger.

Sakhalin is an island with a population of about 500 thousand people located off the southeastern coast of Russia. It is located in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, north of Hokkaido, Japan.

Control of Sakhalin was divided between the Soviet Union and the Japanese Empire in the early 20th century, but Moscow seized it entirely during World War II.