A live sea mollusk of the species Littorina scutulata was found by American doctors in the hand of a boy who was injured in a pond. Californian doctors Stephen Wesley Line and Albert Hayit spoke about a unique case not described in the medical literature before on the BMJ Case Reports portal.
The mollusc slowly grew in a wound in an 11-year-old child, until pediatricians in Los Angeles opened the abscess and found it. Its size at that time was four millimeters, RIA Novosti reports.
After the operation, the "obviously excited" child was allowed to keep the snail for himself, but the mollusk, deprived of its usual habitat, lived only one day after that. Line and Hait emphasize, among other things, the need to comply with current professional medical practices - in particular, opening and draining abscesses. They also urge colleagues to take note of the case they described, which may help identify other similar cases of survival of sea snails or other living organisms in skin abscesses in the future.