Unique medical cases provide insights into how the human body functions and how doctors solve medical mysteries.
Read about 16 strange and interesting cases that medicine faced in 2016.
Ghost Pepper Tears Esophagus
Ghost peppers are some of the hottest chili species in the world. A 47-year-old man from California felt the full fiery power of this pepper after eating a hamburger.
After eating, the man started vomiting, which was impossible to stop. It was so strong that a hole formed in his esophagus. If this condition is left untreated, it is almost always fatal. The man spent 23 days in the hospital.
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Rapunzel syndrome
A 38-year-old woman began complaining of nausea and an inability to hold on to any food. These symptoms were caused by an incredibly rare condition called Rapunzel syndrome.
Named after a fairy tale of a princess with incredibly long hair, this syndrome occurs when a lump of hair develops in a person's stomach, the tail of which travels into the intestines. It is caused by a mental disorder called trichophagia, in which people compulsively eat their own hair.
In this case, doctors surgically removed two clumps of hair. The first one, found in the stomach, was 15 by 10 centimeters in size, and its tail passed into the small intestine. The second lump was found in the woman's small intestine, measuring 3 by 4 centimeters.
Many moles
Thousands of moles appeared on the body of a 48-year-old woman within a few months, and doctors could not understand why.
This condition is called an eruptive nevus. It is very rare, but known to medicine, according to the doctor who treated the woman. The condition can be caused by changes in hormone levels, certain medications, or problems with the immune system. However, none of these reasons can explain a woman's moles.
Some, though not all, moles can signal cancer. The woman will likely need lifelong skin care, according to the doctors who treated her.
A wasp sting caused a stroke in a man
Watch out for the wasps: In the case of one male, the sting of an angry insect led to a stroke.
An hour after being stung by a wasp while working on the street, a 44-year-old man developed several clear signs of a stroke, including speech difficulties, paralysis on one side of his body, and a sagging face.
There are several reasons why a wasp sting can lead to a stroke, according to the case report. For example, some compounds in wasp venom can lead to blood clotting, which causes stroke. Or, if a person has an allergic reaction to the bite, their blood pressure may drop, resulting in decreased blood flow to the head.
In the man's case, the reason why a wasp's sting led to a stroke remains unknown. The person has recovered and is feeling well, according to the doctors who treated him.
Bone disease due to the love of cleanliness
A 28-year-old man developed a rare type of bone disease called skeletal fluorosis due to his habit of cleaning his computer frequently. The disease causes an increase in the density of human bones, which can lead to their deformation.
Skeletal fluorosis is prevalent in parts of the world where fluoride levels in drinking water are too high. However, this disease is rare in North America and Europe, so it was difficult for the doctors who treated the man to find out what caused the disease.
In the end, it turned out that the man often breathed in a dust-cleaning spray. The spray contains a substance called difluoroethane, which is composed of the elements carbon, hydrogen and fluorine. The man was able to overcome his habit of inhaling aerosols and underwent surgery on his injured hip joints.
Snake bite results in loss of smell
After being bitten by a venomous snake in Australia, a man lost his sense of smell for more than a year. The 30-year-old man first went to the hospital after being bitten by a snake. He was given an antidote because doctors did not consider his symptoms severe enough to warrant additional medications. But a few days after the bite, he noticed that his sense of smell was starting to deteriorate, and within a few weeks, he completely lost this ability.
Man swallowed mobile phone
A prisoner in Ireland swallowed a cell phone and doctors had difficulty removing it using conventional approaches.
They initially waited 18 hours to see if the phone would move through the man's gastrointestinal tract, but it remained in his stomach. Doctors tried to remove the phone by pulling it up through the esophagus using medical instruments such as tweezers and similar devices, but were unable to align it properly to pull it out of the stomach. Ultimately, the cell phone was surgically removed.
Blindness due to smartphone
There are many reasons to stop using your smartphone in the bedroom, including temporary blindness. Two unrelated women in the United Kingdom went to see doctors for vision problems in one eye while in bed at night. But these vision problems only appeared after women stared at smartphone screens for several minutes while lying on their sides.
Doctors believe that the problem appeared due to the fact that women used smartphones lying on their side, when one eye was blocked by a pillow. In this situation, the eye with which they looked at the smartphone adapted to light, and the eye blocked by the pillow to darkness. When the smartphone was turned off, the eye, which had previously adapted to light, could not see in until it got used to the dark.
A case of temporary kleptomania
While it comes as no surprise to anyone that cosmetic surgery has some side effects, a 40-year-old woman from Brazil did not expect to leave the hospital after surgery with a temporary mental disorder.
A few days after undergoing surgery, which included a tummy tuck and breast augmentation, the woman developed an irresistible urge to steal. The most likely explanation for these symptoms in a woman may be that at some point during or immediately after surgery, she suffered from insufficient blood flow to the brain, according to one of the doctors who treated her. This could lead to brain damage, which in turn triggered the symptoms of kleptomania. The woman's damaged brain eventually recovered and her neurological symptoms subsided.
6-meter tapeworm found a "home"
The intestines of a 38-year-old Chinese man remained a "home" for tapeworm for more than two years. By the time the man was diagnosed with the infection, the bovine tapeworm parasite had grown to 6 meters in length. The man most likely contracted tapeworm, as he ate raw beef.
Chain can live in a person's intestines for years without causing any symptoms. The man nevertheless developed symptoms such as abdominal pain, weight loss and vomiting, so he consulted a doctor.
The mysterious reason for hiccups
What do you do when your hiccups don't go away? A 35-year-old man went to the hospital three times because he faced this problem. The first two times he was prescribed medication to ease the hiccups. It is used if it lasts longer than two days. Nevertheless, the hiccups kept coming back.
And only during the third visit, the doctors discovered that the man had a tumor in the back of his neck, which was clamping his phrenic nerve. It is this nerve that sends signals from the brain to the diaphragm, the muscle just below the lungs that controls breathing. As the tumor compressed the nerve, it sent disturbed signals to the diaphragm, causing it to contract involuntarily, which led to the hiccups.
Basketball-sized cyst
A young woman in England complained of abdominal pain and stomach fullness, but assumed her symptoms were due to obesity. But when the woman began to complain of pain in her left side, the doctors performed an ultrasound examination, as they suspected that the pain could be caused by kidney stones. However, instead of stones, doctors found a basketball-sized cyst on a woman's ovary. A simple ultrasound test was all that was needed to detect a cyst. However, her family doctor blamed excess weight as the cause of the pain.
First death from hermit spider bite in Europe
An Italian woman died shortly after being bitten by a Mediterranean hermit spider, a relative of the infamous brown recluse spider found in the United States.
This is the first death from a bite from this spider. Its venom is toxic to red blood cells, which are responsible for carrying oxygen in the blood. Without enough red blood cells, the organs do not receive the oxygen they need. The antidote for the hermit spider bite is not available in Italy, so the only thing doctors have been able to help is to provide supportive care. In other words, they tried to eliminate the symptoms and maintain life until the body was rid of the poison. However, the woman died 12 hours after being admitted to the hospital.
Benefits of donating blood
Donating blood is a good way to help others, but for the 83-year-old man, it comes with a personal benefit.
The man donated blood regularly for about 20 years. It was only recently that he learned that this act of kindness helped him save his own life. As it turns out, the man has a hereditary condition called hemochromatosis. It is characterized by causing the body to absorb too much iron from food. Excess iron in the body can have widespread consequences, including liver damage. The only way to treat this disease is to remove iron from the body, which is done by taking blood. This is what a man has done for many years.
Delusional state due to gluten
A 37-year-old woman found herself in a severe delusional state due to the usual cause - gluten. Before the onset of the disease, the woman was about to receive a Ph. D. Her problems started from celiac disease, and delusional ideas are the consequences of the disease.
However, it was very difficult for doctors to get a woman to follow a gluten-free diet, as her delusional ideas led to the fact that she stopped trusting medical professionals.
The woman eventually stopped eating gluten and her symptoms went away. But when she inadvertently uses it, the symptoms return.
Calcification of the bladder
An infection with the Schistosoma parasite resulted in the calcification of the man's bladder. He was infected with a parasite that is found in many parts of the world. These parasitic worms live near the bladder and ureters. In the case of the man, the eggs of the parasite entered the bladder and began to deposit on its wall. In response, part of the bladder wall began to calcify.
When doctors scanned the man's pelvis, they saw a thin shell of calcium that resembled an eggshell. It will likely take years for the calcium to disappear after the infection has been eradicated.
Anna Pismenna