A sixteen-year-old boy recently went to the doctors with a strange complaint: when he blows his nose, the room fills a pungent and unpleasant odor.
The boy only received medical help at the age of 15, after several years of congestion and a lack of sense of smell. Apart from these symptoms – and some allergies – he was completely healthy, showed no signs of tonsillitis or other diseases and did not drink or smoke.
The team performed a nasal endoscopy on the patient and found no signs of worrying things like masses or lesions. With no obvious cause, he was sent away with nasal rinses, intranasal steroid spray and antihistamines, and he was told to return within 4-6 weeks, doctors write in the journal. JAMA Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery.
He did not show. A year later, when he did return, it was with a new symptom: the foul odor that came out of his nose when he blew.
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Despite the smell of his nose, he did not report any bad breath. A CT scan was performed, on which a small “spherical structure” of 9 mm was detected in its nasal cavity. Around the sphere were calcium deposits that could be caused by chronic inflammation, necrosis or scarring, an indication that the structure was a foreign body.
He was taken to have the object removed. After gentle suction, the area began to bleed before the cause of its problems finally fell out: a small metal bullet from a BB rifle. After a conversation with the family, they discovered that he had been shot in the nose when he was 8 or 9 years old and that it had been stuck there ever since and caused the smell.
“The foreign body causes blockage of natural drainage pathways in the nose, so mucus, inhaled debris and bacteria are formed,” said co-author Dylan Z. Erwin, a medical student at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio . , said Live Science.
Since he had no symptoms at the time, the family did not think about it and believed that the problems at 15 were not related. Healthy tissue grew over the BB gun, making it impossible with a sneeze.
The boy had no serious infection, and after the BB was removed, he was able to blow his nose again without stinking the spot.