Doctors Find 10cm Leech Living in Man’s Throat After He Drank Unboiled Water 2 Months Ago

This is so freaky!

According to Mirror, a doctor in China pulled out a 10cm leech that was growing in a man’s throat for 2 months.

Source: mirror

The 60-year-old patient, Mr Li, reportedly went to a hospital in Yibin, China to seek help for his sickness. For the past two months, he had been suffering from an itchy throat and had been coughing up blood for two whole months. He also mentioned how he has repeatedly attempted to cure his disease but was unfortunately misdiagnosed each time.

However, as Doctor Zhang Dadong performed an endoscopy on Mr Li, he immediately realised that there was a leech living in his patient’s windpipe.

Source: mirror

As it was challenging to retrieve the slimy parasite, the doctor used a pair of forceps to remove it after sedating it with aerosol. What came out was a huge pulsating leech that was recorded to be at an unbelievable length of 10cm. Whoa! 

Source: mirror

Source: mirror

Mr Li, who came from a rural village, was believed to have ingested leech eggs when he drank uncooked water. Over the course of two months, the larva then hatched and grew into its current size of 10cm. As such, Doctor Zhang as well as other medical websites such as Medical News Today advise the public to boil their water in order to kill parasites, making it much safer to drink.

Let us take this as a lesson to remember to drink water that has been boiled and prepared properly. Hopefully this wouldn’t happen to anyone else because having a leech living in your throat would really suck.

Also read: Woman’s Throat Tumour Turns Out to Be Two-Inch Leech Living Inside for 3 Months