Maggots Living In Man’s Head Might Have Saved His Life (Photos)

Doctors in Vietnam were baffled after removing a dozen maggots from under the scalp of a patient who’d been complaining of headaches. One doctor said the maggots might have saved the man’s life. 

Dr. Nguyen Duc Anh, with Hanoi’s Viet Duc Hospital, told Thanh Nien News that the maggots were living on the man’s skull near where Malaysian doctors previously put in a titanium plate. 

The man, identified by the Daily Mail as Pham Quang Lanh, reportedly had the plate implanted three years earlier after being struck with a metal bar. 

Lanh said he suffered from occasional headaches since the original surgery. 

“It was mostly OK until a year ago when I noticed it was swollen and sore to touch,” he said. “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.”

As the pain grew more intense, however, family members inspected his skull and noticed maggots crawling under the skin. They ultimately convinced him to go to the hospital and get it taken care of. 

Anh said the spot on the skull was sore because of a lingering infection that had gotten worse. 

“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,” Anh said. 

“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.”

Anh said maggot infestations in surgical wounds on the head are extremely rare and that he could only find eight references to them in medical literature. The patients in those eight cases all died, but the titanium plate likely saved Lanh’s life. 

“In this man’s case, however, the maggots had not gone on to eat any of his brain because of the metal plate,” Anh said.

The maggots might saved his life as well, the doctor theorized. 

“They actually may have kept him alive by eating the dead tissue that might otherwise have made the infection spread more quickly and killed him,” Anh said. 

Sources: Thanh Nien News, Daily Mail / Photo Credit: Bacsinoitru via Daily Mail