Two North Carolina doctors have been reprimanded for performing a caesarian or c-section on a woman only to find that she was not pregnant with any baby, ABC News reported.

The women was suffering a condition called Pseudocyesis or false pregnancy.  And Dr. Gerianne Geszler, who was the on-call physician on that day, and Dr. Dorrette Grant, who performed the caesarian in 2008 did not diagnose it.

Pseudocyesis occurs in up to 6 out of 22,000 women.  This condition comes with abdominal distension and the abdomen can expand in the same way as it does during real pregnancy.  This can be caused by buildup of gas, fat, feces or urine and the symptoms can be resolved under general anesthesia and the abdomen can return to its normal shape.

Other signs of pseudocyesis include menstrual irregularity found in 56 to 98 percent of women with the condition and the sensation of fetal movements which is experienced by 48 to 75 percent of women with the condition.

What happened at the Cape Fear Medical Center in Fayetteville, N.C. was that a resident doctor gave a false diagnosis and other supervisory doctors agreed with her diagnosis without examining the woman who received the surgery.

That is, when the couple came to the hospital, doctors did not think twice and opened the woman's stomach only to find there was no baby.

For more information on pseudocyesis, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_pregnancy

DL