Australian surgeons removed a live worm from a human brain for the first time. In this respect informs Guard.
The 64-year-old woman sought help at a hospital in Canberra in 2021 with abdominal pain, which was accompanied by depression and short-term memory loss a year later. The pensioner was sent for examination, during the MRI of the brain a pathology was revealed that required surgical intervention.
During the operation, surgeons found an 8-centimeter-long live worm in the patient’s brain. After studying the parasite in the laboratory, it turned out that it is a subspecies of worms often found in pythons, the Latin name is Ophidascaris robertsi.
The infectious diseases doctor at the city hospital suggested that the woman may have caught the larvae of the parasite when she ate greens or touched the grass on which the pythons common in the area could crawl.
The case in Canberra was the world’s first case of this parasite in humans.
Earlier, surgeons cut a live 15-centimeter piece from the chest of a man from Volgograd worm.