Unusual Emergency Room Cases

Unusual Emergency Room Cases You cannot work in an emergency room for long without seeing some unusual cases. Here are some strange, but actual, unusual ER cases. You know what they say about raw beef: You shouldn't eat it (at least, not unless you cook it first). A man in China learned this lesson the hard way after finding out that he had a 20-foot-long (6 meters) tapeworm living inside of him— a result of chowing down on uncooked cow meat. The tapeworm likely lived inside the man's small intestine for at least two years before he went to see the doctors who would ultimately help him flush out this lengthy stowaway. The man complained of stomach pain, vomiting, loss of appetite and weight loss; his doctors were able to quickly identify the cause of these symptoms because the patient brought along a crucial piece of evidence — a fragment of the parasite, which he had found in his stool. Combined with the patient's known predilection for raw beef, the tapeworm specimen helped doctors guess that the man was sharing his intestine with Taenia saginata(a species of beef tapeworm). After being treated with an antibiotic that caused him to pass the tapeworm out of his body within hours, the man's symptoms cleared up in just three months, according to a case report published in The New England Journal of Medicine in January 2016. Presumably, the man's preference for uncooked beef passed just as quickly. A parasitic worm infection that causes a "calcified bladder" — a condition that probably feels every bit as uncomfortable as it sounds. A 43-year-old man in Qatar found out just how painful a calcified bladder can be. He had blood in his urine and pain when he peed for a month before doctors diagnosed him with an infection by the parasite Schistosoma, which is transmitted by freshwater snails. The man's infections was located near his bladder and ureters (the tubes connecting the bladder to the kidneys). Eggs of the parasite ended up on the wall of the man's bladder, and his body's immune response caused these areas of the bladder wall to become calcified in a pattern known as "eggshell calcification," according to a case report published in The New England Journal of Medicine in February 2016. Related: Top 10 Tips to Start Your Semester the Right Way While this kind of calcification as a result of schistosomiasis(another name for Schistosome infection) is not rare, it is unusual for doctors to see a patient with an entire bladder encased in calcium, since it takes years for that much calcium to build up inside the body. But the patient's doctors suspected that the man actually became infected

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