A Florida man offered doctors the operation of a lifetime earlier this month when they extracted 150 living larvae from his nose after he showed up at the hospital complaining of nose bleeds and severe pain.
According to a report from WTLV, the patient, who has not been named, showed up at HCA Florida Memorial Hospital earlier this week looking to get help for the pain he was having in his nose.
When the on-call ENT examined his nose, he noticed something rather bizarre. Wanting to get a better look, Dr. David Carlson grabbed a camera after seeing something moving in the man’s nose.
When he took a closer look, he noticed dozens of living pests making a home inside the man’s sinuses, feeding off of him.
Suddenly, it all started to make sense, as the patient shared with WTLV that his face had started “swelling” and that he could “hardly talk” with his face feeling “like it was on fire.”
“Size-wise, there’s variations, but the larger ones were as big as the end of my pinky,” Dr. Carlson said. “I knew he was in big trouble. There was erosion that was occurring near the skull base in very close proximity to his eye and his brain.”
Carlson shared that the larvae had burrowed into the tissue inside the patient’s head, with 150 creatures being pulled through different methods.
“They were right up against his skull base, right under the brain,” he said. “Had they gone through that, it could have killed him.”
The patient shared with the media outlet that he had a tumor removed 30 years ago and that his compromised immune system could have contributed to the infestation.
The doctor shared that nasal myiasis, the condition the patient had, was so rare that he had never seen a documented case in the U.S.
The patient is also an avid fisher and may have gotten it from handling dead fish.