In an extremely rare case, doctors in Portugal found a 64-year-old man's ear infested with flesh-eating maggots after he went to the hospital complaining of pain, itching and bleeding. The unnamed man was hospitalised after experiencing the symptoms for five days. Doctors at Hospital Pedro Hispano documented the rare case in a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
As per the paper, during the physical examination, the doctors found "numerous mobile larvae" were blocking the 64-year-old's ear canal. They used forceps to pick out the maggots and found that a part of the man's eardrum had been perforated by the larvae. The doctors then cleaned the ear with irrigating water and treated it with antibiotic ear drops, boric acid solution and oral antibiotics.
Speaking to Newsweek, Catarina Rato, one of the doctors and a co-author of the paper, said, "The [characteristics] of the larvae, cylindrical, segmented, white yellow-coloured body... were compatible with the Cochliomyia hominivorax species."
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Dr Rato also explained that Cochliomyia hominivorax, more commonly known as the New World screw-worm fly, is a species of parasitic fly known for how its larvae eat the living tissue of warm-blooded animals.
As per the outlet, the female maggots can lay between 250-500 eggs in exposed living flesh, often targeting wounds in animals. They then hatch and burrow into the surrounding flesh, feeding on it as they do so. The maggots also burrow deeper if the wound is disturbed, hence the name "screw-worm". The infection caused by these maggots can be so extreme that the host animal can also die if left untreated.
The patient in Portugal was luckily treated with antibiotics to prevent secondary infection. He recovered in a week, the paper said.
