Man With Mysterious Headaches Finds MAGGOTS Inside His Head From Botched Operation Wound

A Vietnamese man who complained of headaches found he had more than a dozen maggots inside his skull - which saved him from a fatal infection.

Labourer Pham Quang Lanh was originally injured when an iron bar fell from a building site and hit him in the head in Malaysia.

Doctors repaired the injury by inserting a titanium plate over his skull, but Mr Lanh, 28, noticed his head became increasingly swollen and sore to touch.

When he asked his family to look at the wound, they noticed maggots under his skin and instantly took him to hospital.

Medics said the scar from the plate insertion had become infection, but as he hadn't had the scar checked out it began to fester and attracted a fly which laid eggs on the scar.

Mr Lanh explained: 'It had healed up pretty well and although I had headaches occasionally, it was mostly okay a year ago when I noticed it was swollen and sore to touch.

'I didn't want to go to hospital again because I hoped it would heal on its own and even now three years later I'm still paying the bill back for the last operation. I just couldn't afford another medical bill.'

Dr Nguyen Duc Anh, of Hanoi’s Viet Duc Hospital's neurosurgery ward, said: 'When his scar swelled a year ago, he did not go to hospital because of financial reasons. In fact the reason that it was swollen was because it was infected, and eventually some tissue had died leaving him with the festering injury.

'When we took him into surgery we discovered several maggots which were removed. We then needed to carry out a full operation to remove the maggots that had managed to go deeper.'

But he said that the maggot infestation, which were sent away for tests and were probably from a fly leaving eggs there, had actually stopped the man from dying by eating the necrotic tissue.

He said: 'This sort of fly infestation is extremely rare especially in the skull, I found eight references to it in medical literature worldwide and in every case the other patient died. In this man's case however the maggots had not gone on to eat any of his brain because of the metal plate, and actually may have kept him alive by eating the dead tissue that might otherwise have made the infection spread more quickly and killed him.'

The use of maggots to cleanse wounds is well known in historical medical practices as they can remove necrotic tissue and also disinfect the wound.