A Florida man experiencing constant nose bleeds and facial swelling had 150 live insects removed from the inside of his nose and sinus cavity last week.
The patient said he began to feel "off" late last year, but it wasn't until recently that symptoms began to get worse.
The removal of a cancerous tumour from the patient's nose 30 years earlier had left him with an extremely compromised immune system.
"Over a couple hours my face just started swelling, my lips swelled, I could hardly talk," he told First Coast News.
"My whole face felt like it was on fire. I started getting nose bleeds, constant nose bleeds, I couldn't even get up to go to the bathroom without my nose starting to bleed."
It was at this point he went to a Jacksonville hospital, where he was told by a doctor that he "saw movement" in his nasal cavity.
ENT Dr David Carlson said that things dramatically changed when they took a camera to look in the patients nose.
Dozens and dozens of bugs were feeding on the inside of the patient's nose and sinus cavity, some according to Carlson "as big as the end of my pinky".
Suction was initially used to try and remove the larvae, but they were large enough that they clogged the device.
"We ended up having to remove them one by one using different instrumentation," he said.
Samples of the 150 bugs removed from the patient's nose have been sent to an epidemiologist to determine their species.
"They were right up against his skull base, right under the brain, had they gone through that it could have killed him," said Carlson.
Nasal myiasis is an infestion of insect larvae in the nose.
It is an extremely rare infection that can affect people with compromised immune systems.
SHARE ME