Unusual dinner may have led to tapeworm 50 years later
A 71-year-old man had a 25cm tapeworm removed from his groin area, 50 years after he consumed raw snake meat during military service. The rare parasitic infection, known as sparganosis, was discovered incidentally during hernia surgery.
Why it matters
This case study illustrates the long-term health risks associated with consuming undercooked or raw wild game and the persistence of certain parasites in human tissue.
During surgery to repair a hernia in a 71-year-old man’s right groin, his doctors discovered something unexpected: a tapeworm. The surgeons carefully fished out the 25cm-long worm and recorded the extraction of this infection rarely seen in the peritoneal cavity. Even outside the body, the live worm could be seen undulating on the table.
MedPage Reports that the man admitted to having eaten raw snake on several occasions during his military service 50 years earlier.
Four years earlier, the same patient had a 18cm tapeworm found incidentally and extracted during the repair of a left inguinal hernia, according to Chang-Seop Lee, MD, PhD, and Yeon Jun Jeong, MD, PhD, of Jeonbuk National University Medical School in Jeonju, South Korea.
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