In New York City, USA, experts removed a rare parasite from a woman's head that caused hallucinations. This is reported by the Metro.
At the beginning of last year, 42-year-old Rachel Palma felt strange: she suffered from nightmares, insomnia, did not control her actions, and also forgot where she was. The woman went to the hospital several times, but no one could give her an accurate diagnosis.
The doctors decided to do an MRI and found a tumor in the left side of the brain in the American woman the size of a small ball. According to Jonathan Rasouli, chief physician of the neurosurgery department at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, the malignancy was near the part of the brain that controls speech and action. Doctors told Palma that she had cancer that required surgery and chemotherapy.
The American was sent for an operation, during which surgeons found a foreign body in her brain at the site of the alleged tumor. It looked like a quail egg, and when opened, a small tapeworm emerged from it.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the woman contracted neurocysticercosis, which triggers the development of epilepsy. Surgeon Rasuli noted that about a thousand people are hospitalized with this problem in the United States every year.
Earlier in May, it was reported that doctors in the UK removed larvae from the head of a 50-year-old patient. The woman asked for help, feeling that something was moving under her scalp.