Boy struggling to breathe stuns medical doctors after coughing up residing five-inch creature
Seven-year-old Xiaoxiang was being treated for a cough and blood in his saliva in a hospital in China when he hacked up the 12-cm long creature – and it was alive
A boy who was sent to hospital with breathing difficulties stunned doctors when he hacked up the grim cause of his problems – 12cm-long leech. And it was alive.
Seven-year-old Xiaoxiang had a cough and blood in his saliva. He had previously sought treatment at a different hospital, however when the treatment proved unsuccessful, the young boy was transported to the paediatric department in the Pu’er People’s Hospital in China.
Following undergoing an atomisation inhalation treatment – a treatment that turns liquid medications into a mist to be inhaled – doctors were gobsmacked when Xiaoxiang violently coughed up a strange object -a whopping big live leech measuring around 12cm in length.
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Medics then carried out an electronic bronchoscopy on the young boy to see if any other insects were in his body. Lucky for Xiaoxiang, a thorough investigation of his airways resulted in no further grisly discoveries.
Doctors determined that the leech had been stuck in Xiaoxiang’s lungs for some time, causing a serious infection. The boy required a deep clean of his lungs and the removal of blood clots in the area, NeedToKnow reports.
The treatment was a success and the Xiaoxiang made a full recovery, which is lucky. If attempts of removing the leech didn’t work, the insect could have blocked the child’s airways and caused suffocation.
Xiaoxiang’s family live in a rural part in China, and they often go to the village’s river in their free time. It thought that during one of the visits, the leech found its way into Xiaoxiang’s trachea after he inhaled eggs or larvae into his airways.
The moist environment provided by the boy’s body, including oxygen and blood, provided an ideal space for the leech to grow.
It’s not the grimmest discovery inside a body that doctors have found.
A man who was seen at a hospital in Vietnam with stomach pains received life-saving surgery after medics discovered that a 65-cm long live eel and a lemon had been shoved into the man’s rectum.
