Doctors have discovered a decade-old tapeworm inside a man’s brain after he started suffering from vomiting and headaches.
The incident occurred in Austin, Texas, where Gerardo was rushed to the hospital after contracting neurocysticercosis believed to be caused by consuming under-cooked pork.
As doctors have explained in an interview with CBS 21, the man has most likely ingested tapeworm larvae during his vacation in Mexico where he ate undercooked pork.
In addition, the tapeworm had allegedly been growing inside man’s brain for at least a decade before symptoms such as vomiting and headaches helped identify the real cause.
According to the doctors, the tapeworm and larvae could have easily killed the patient if they hadn’t been removed soon.
As Gerardo explained, he’d been suffering from headaches for months before his condition got to the point that he collapsed.
“It’s very intense, very strong… it made me sweat too, sweat from the pain, pain in the head and then I would vomit from the pain,” he told CBS 21.
Thanks to a brain scan, neurosurgeon Dr. Jordan Amadio and the team were able to discover a 1.6” tapeworm lodged in the area near the patient’s brain stem.
As Dr. Amadio explained, neurocysticercosis, the condition that affects thousands of people in the States alone each year, “can go undetected for years” until the parasites develop and grow bigger.
“This can go undetected for years, so you can eat by accident a microscopic egg from the tapeworm larva and not know it for years,” he said.
“They can grow inside the body without causing symptoms until they get big enough.”
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