Surgeons remove live worm from Canberra woman’s brain
An eight-centimetre parasitic roundworm has been pulled from a woman's brain alive and wriggling in what's being described as a world-first. The 16-month medical nightmare is thought to have stemmed from some foraged greens contaminated with snake poo.
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00:00 Long, red and wriggling.
00:04 What is that?
00:05 That's not what we expect.
00:07 After a bit of shock and just standing there still, we went, "It's moving."
00:12 A scene straight from a horror film.
00:15 My immediate response was to take it out of my fingers, take it out of my hands, take
00:18 it out of my forceps, and we rapidly put it into a pathology pot where it continued to
00:23 move at great speed and vigour.
00:26 Starting out as tiny larvae, the worm had toured the body of a 64-year-old woman from
00:31 New South Wales, soaking up nutrients and steadily growing larger.
00:36 Hers had been in her lungs and her liver, but it had now arrived in her brain.
00:42 The patient's problems started in 2021 with severe abdominal pain caused by the parasite
00:47 being in her liver.
00:49 Six months later, when the worm larvae moved to her lungs, she developed a bad cough.
00:54 By 2022, the worm was living in her head, causing memory problems, prompting a brain
01:00 scan and then surgery.
01:02 This brain worm is a world first.
01:04 The parasite in question is usually found in carpet pythons, not humans.
01:10 It's thought the worm was ingested from foraged waragal greens.
01:14 When the python poos, some of the eggs from the parasite come out as well, and we believe
01:19 that some flora, so some vegetation has gotten contaminated with that.
01:24 A clinical first with a nightmarish quality.
01:27 For me, the only time I'd ever see a worm like that would be in the garden.
01:30 Quite revolting and not very nice.
01:34 So you have to feel sorry for the poor patient in whose brain this was found.
01:37 The 64-year-old woman is now reported to be recovering well.
01:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]