Stomach-churning footage shows a wriggling leech after it was removed from a man’s nose.
Measuring around one inch, the blood-sucking parasite is seen squirming after it was gently taken out of the patient’s nostril.
The patient, known only by his surname Pan, admitted to swimming in a river in his village three months before. Doctors believe this caused a leech larvae to enter his nostril before hatching and growing.
Pan went to Dongguan Chang’an Hospital in South China’s Guangdong province after he experienced a near-nonstop nosebleed for 10 days.
Worried ‘yanking’ the leech would cause the blood-sucking parasite to break in two, medics slowly eased the worm-like creature out using forceps.
A patient, known only as Pan, is seen lying on a hospital bed after a wriggling leech was removed from his nose. A doctor then put the blood-sucking parasite in a container next to Pan. Leech larvae are thought to have entered his nose while he was swimming in a river
Doctors gently removed the leech via forceps after dabbing the area with an anaesthetic. They worried ‘yanking’ the parasite would cause the blood-sucking animal to break in two
Ear, nose and throat specialist Dr Liu Yuxing, from the hospital, said: ‘I found a soft organism inside the patient’s nasal cavity which moved when I touched it with the endoscope.
‘Though I’d never come across one myself in my many years as a doctor, I immediately suspected it was a leech based on similar reports seen in medical journals.’
Pan’s case was handed over to Dr Yuxing’s colleague, Dr Xu Zhenbin, who added: ‘Because the animal was stuck tightly up the man’s nose, yanking it out would only likely cause the leech to break.’
In the end, the two doctors dabbed some an anaesthetic on the leech before slowly easing it out.
It is unclear if Pan’s breathing was affected or how he is recovering.
Doctor Xu Zhenbin, who performed the procedure, can be seen holding the leech to camera. He claims the animal was stuck high up inside Pan’s nose, causing a near-nonstop nosebleed
A camera shows the leech lodged in Pan’s nostril. It is unclear if his breathing was affected
Leeches are known to attach themselves inside nostrils. Footage released last July showed a parasite being removed from a patient’s nose in Nghe An, a province in the north of Vietnam, around 186 miles (300km) south of the capital Hanoi.
Dr Manh Le, who extracted the blood-sucking leech, claimed the male patient had difficulty breathing from his nose due to the parasite.
The medic is thought to have tried to coax the leech out using a laser, which he shone into the man’s nose, before eventually pulling the parasite out with a tweezer-like device.
Local reports state the unnamed man, who works in a forest, drank water from a stream in the wilderness, which may have caused leech larvae to enter his nostril.