A 58-year-old Chinese man experienced an entomophobe's worst nightmare after discovering a cockroach had lodged itself in his trachea.
The incident began one night while the man was asleep. He woke up to a strange sensation of something crawling up his nose. Startled, he felt the object slip down his throat and began coughing but was unable to dislodge it. Unsure of what had just happened, he eventually fell back to sleep, as per a local Chinese news outlet.
The next day, he brushed the incident aside and continued his daily routine. However, over the next three days, he noticed that his breath had developed an unusually foul odour. Despite brushing and maintaining oral hygiene, the bad breath persisted. He also began coughing up yellow sputum, which eventually led him to seek medical attention.
The man, who was from Haikou, located in China's Hainan Province, went to the Hainan hospital and consulted an ENT specialist. There, an examination of his upper respiratory tract revealed nothing abnormal. Convinced that something was wrong, he was referred to Dr Lin Ling, a respiratory and critical care physician. Dr Lin conducted a chest CT scan, revealing a shadow in the posterior basal segment of the right lower lung lobe, suggesting a foreign object had gotten stuck there.
The man was recommended a bronchoscopy to further investigate the issue. “During the procedure, I clearly saw something with wings in the bronchus,” Dr Lin told the outlet. “The foreign body was wrapped in a lot of phlegm. After removing the surrounding phlegm, we discovered it was a cockroach.”
The bug was carefully removed from the man's trachea, and the area was cleaned thoroughly. The foul odour the patient had experienced disappeared soon after. He made a full recovery and was discharged the next day.
While Dr Lin noted that such unusual cases are rare, he advised anyone who suspects they have a foreign body lodged in their lower respiratory tract to seek medical attention immediately.
