Here’s something you don’t see every day. Surgeons operating on a 71-year-old man’s inguinal hernia found a 10-inch living tapeworm tucked inside his abdomen. And get this — the guy told them it happened before.
The case was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. The man went in for a laparoscopic hernia repair. Everything looked normal. His blood work was clean. No signs of infection. Then they spotted something whitish and stringy wedged between his bladder and pubic bone.
They pulled it out. It was alive. It slithered on the table.
A genetic test identified it as Spirometra erinaceieuropaei — a tapeworm that causes sparganosis. The lifecycle is complicated: adults live in dogs and cats, eggs get into water, larvae infect crustaceans, then fish, reptiles, or amphibians. Humans are accidental hosts. The worms wander aimlessly through the body.
Turns out this wasn’t his first rodeo. Four years earlier, surgeons found an 18cm worm during a left-side hernia repair. It wasn’t identified. He wasn’t treated. After the second discovery, doctors put him on anti-parasitic meds.
Best guess for how he got infected? He recalled eating raw snake meat during military service — 50 years ago. That’s longer than the typical 20-30 year lifespan for these worms. Maybe he got infected more than once. Either way, it’s a story his doctors won’t forget.
