In Portugal, doctors have found a tooth in the skull of a 14-year-old boy. Bitten on the head during a football match, he had been partially cut open and suffered from great fatigue and high fever.
When a football game turns into a nightmare. In Portugal, doctors discovered a tooth in the skull of a 14-year-old boy who had been bitten in the head during a match. He then went to the hospital for fatigue and a high fever. This exceptional phenomenon was reported on September 20 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.
During the sports meeting, the boy in question had bumped into another player. Furious, the latter had violently bit him on the head, partially opening his skull: the victim had a wound five cm deep on the right side. At the nearest hospital, the doctors had put stitches on him and he had gone home without further complications. Five days later, feeling nauseous and suffering from a fever, he went to the Emergency Department of São Bernardo Hospital. The wound had been cleaned again and the doctors had prescribed him antibiotics.
But three days later, his pain persisting, the unfortunate had to return to the emergency room. Pus was now coming out of his wound. He suffered from an abscess for which the doctors then prescribed him antibiotics via intravenous. Four days later, suspecting a fracture or a bone infection, the experts made him pass a scanner… To discover, to their greatest surprise, a foreign body in his skull, composed of calcium or metal!
Pay close attention to bites
The next day, the doctors understood: it was a tooth that was removed from the young man’s skull without any particular difficulty. 48 hours later, the patient was finally able to leave the hospital, “in good health”, according to the doctors who authored the article. “Scalp infections after laceration of the scalp are rare. (The symptoms suffered by the patient, editor’s note) should alert”, they explain.
And to conclude: “This case is an example of a very rare complication following an injury due to a human bite. However, it shows how important it is to be aware of the risks associated with human or animal bites. They are common causes of complications when not treated properly”.
Similar cases have already been reported in the medical literature
Indeed, this story is reminiscent of an incident that took place in 2015 in England where a young boy had gone to Queen Victoria Hospital in England, complaining of intense pain in his hand. He had hit his brother during a boxing match and found his hands bleeding. By doing an x-ray, the doctors had discovered a tooth stuck between his ring finger and his little finger.
But it sometimes happens that teeth are found in unlikely places in patients without a bite being responsible. This summer, in India, dentists notably found 526 teeth hidden in a pocket inside the jaw of a seven-year-old child. Even more surprising, a few months ago, the BMJ reported on a 59-year-old Dane having lost his sense of smell because a tooth was growing in his nose.
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