Hanoi man finds leech latching inside throat month after chewing wild grass

A month prior, the 53-year-old man was handling a mouse trap when he was injured. So he took a handful of wild grass, put it into his mouth to chew it into a paste, then used that to cover his wound.

Recently, the man felt pain in his throat and a sensation that something was wiggling inside. When he put up a mirror to check, he saw that there was a black mass moving at the back of his throat. He later had hoarseness and began to cough out blood, so he went to the National Hospital of Endocrinology for a check-up.

Ha Manh Hung, deputy head of the Otorhinolaryngology-Dentistry-Ophthalmology department, on Wednesday said the patient's case was a rare one. Doctors discovered a foreign object latching near the man's trachea. After the man was put under anesthesia, doctors extracted a live leech spanning 6 cm from the man.

Hung said the leech usually has a small size, but once it ingests enough blood, they will grow quickly and become a threat. People should not consume water sources or leaves in the wild to prevent other living things from entering their bodies, he said.