Live tapeworm pulled out of Chinese man’s brain

Doctors in China believe a 10cm worm pulled from a man’s brain might have been the result of a bad barbecue.

According to a report from Mandy Zuo at the South China Morning Post, the 26-year-old patient had been suffering from a sudden onset of seizures.

But doctors at the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University couldn’t find a cause for his episodes.

So they X-rayed his head and discovered a parasitic warm had been burrowing into his brain.

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The patient’s lead doctor, Wang Chunliang shared the sickening X-ray with Chinese media outlet Pear Video, with the image clearly showing the infestation.

Wang and his team operated on the patient on Monday, recounting the surgery in an interview with Wang Qinglin at the China Jiangxi Network.

“The worm was still alive when we took it out,” Wang said.

“It was springy, white all over, and could swim.

“The worms leave many traces like tunnels when they swim.”

Thankfully, the worm didn’t cause too much damage, with post Wang telling journalists the postoperative results were “very good”.

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The sickly image of the thin, string-like worm is now going viral as the gory details of the story are shared across social media.

It’s a photo of Spirometra mansoni, a type of tapeworm that live inside a host body for as long as 30 years.

One of the major ways the worms can be transmitted to humans is by eating undercooked meat.

And that’s exactly what was assumed to be the cause in this case.

“The patient’s sister said that he likes to eat barbecue very much, and he opened his own barbecue shop,” Wang said.

Wang suspects the patient sampled some of his barbecued treats which could have spent a bit more time on the hotplate.