Doctors remove 6-inch-long leech from man's nose; patient was in pain for 1 month

A man had to undergo a nightmare of sorts as he writhed in pain and bled from his nose only to find out after a month that a leech was quiety sucking blood deep inside his nasal cavity. Read about this bizarre medical case from Uttarakhand.

Srinagar (Uttarakhand):An elderly man in Uttarakhand had a nightmarish experience after a leech found its way into his nose and made him bleed and writhe in pain for around one month without him knowing about the actual cause. Ram Lal, 55 a resident of Tehri Hindolakhal block, complained of bleeding and pain in his nose for several weeks during which he saw many doctors but his condition did not improve.

Flustered by the continuous pain, the patient finally arrived at Srinagar Combined Hospital on Tuesday where ENT doctors carefully examined him only to get shocked to know the reason for his discomfort. During the investigation, doctors found that a 6-inch-long leech was living inside the patient's nose and had sucked a lot of blood while injuring the patient's nasal cavity.

Doctors, as well as the patient, were dumbfounded upon the discovery of the foreign body crawling deep inside his nose. After some struggle, the doctors carefully removed the leech from the elderly's patient's nose who said he felt a world of good as the parasitic worm was pulled out. Shortly afterward, the patient was sent home.

"For around a month, the patient was suffering from pain and bleeding from the nose. He had consulted several doctors at the local level but he was unaware that there was a leech inside his nasal cavity. Yesterday, when I examined him, I found there was a leech inside his nose. It is possible that the worm entered his body after he drank untreated water as people around mountains drink directly from natural sources," ENT surgeon, Dr Digpal Dutt told ETV Bharat.

He said the leech would have been quite small in size at the time of its entry. "Since there is a high blood supply in the nose, the leech kept on sucking it and its size grew to around 5 to 6 inches," he said. Dr Dutt said that the patient was lucky that the leech had not made its way into the trachea. "It could have been life-threatening for him," he said.