Medical Must-See: Leech lodges in farmer’s pharynx
An unwanted guest was the cause of this patient's bloody cough.
A farmer had been coughing up blood for 15 days before his doctors pulled out a 7cm leech that had made itself at home in the patient’s pharynx.
The patient, 36, had been referred from a rural healthcare facility in Pakistan with his complaint of bloodstained sputum.
Vital signs and baseline blood investigations, including haemoglobin, were within normal limits. There were no associated symptoms such as fever, odynophagia, melaena or respiratory tract infection.
However, he had been drinking water from a contaminated pond, his doctors wrote in Cureus.
