WOMAN’S SELFIES CAPTURE MOVING LUMP ON FACE: A PARASITE - HealthInfi | We Secure Your Health

Wednesday 11 July 2018

WOMAN’S SELFIES CAPTURE MOVING LUMP ON FACE: A PARASITE


In selfies, a woman documented a lump under her skin for weeks before doctors were able to remove it and it didn’t stay in one place, according to a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The lump appeared after the unnamed woman, 32, visited a rural area outside Moscow. First, it was a small bump under her left eye. Five days later, it appeared above the eye. Her upper lip was bulging 10 days after that.
The parasite can appear and disappear in few minutes,” Dr. Vladimir Kartashev, a professor of medicine at Rostov State Medical University who saw the patient, told CNN in an email. “Doctors who are not familiar with the disease don’t believe … the patients. That’s why I asked the patient to make selfies.”
But Kartashev had seen “at least 10 patients with the same presentation before,” and the migrating form can be “extremely confusing,” he said.
“It is rare for it to cause disease in humans,” Dr. Jorgen Kurtzhals, professor at University of Copenhagen and Copenhagen University Hospital and president of the World Federation of Parasitologists, told CNN in an email. Kurtzhals was not involved in the care of this patient but has previously co-authored a case in which one of these worms was removed through eye surgery.
In their adult form, they can be as long as 170 millimeters and live for five to 10 years, according to CDC. Cases have been reported around the globe, particularly in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.
“Dirofilaria repens is an emerging parasite of the Old World,” Kartashev said.

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