Did His Unusual Dinner Lead to a Tape Worm 50 Years Later?

During surgery to repair a hernia in a 71-year-old man's right groin, his doctors discovered something unexpected: a tapeworm.

The surgeons fished the 10-inch long worm out carefully and recorded the extraction of this infection rarely seen in the peritoneal cavity. Even outside the body, the live worm could be seen undulating on the table.

Four years earlier, the same patient had a 7-inch tapeworm found incidentally and extracted during the repair of a left inguinal hernia, according to Chang-Seop Lee, MD, PhD, and Yeon Jun Jeong, MD, PhD, of Jeonbuk National University Medical School in Jeonju, South Korea.

The patient had not received antiparasitic medication afterwards. Prior to the surgery the patient reported no symptoms "other than a painless bulge in his right groin," the group reported along with the image published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"There was no localized pain, inflammatory reaction, or neurological symptoms suggestive of parasitic infection," Lee and Jeong told MedPage Today.