One time, in a seasonal allergy haze, I mistook a bottle of eye drops for a nasal spray. Nothing came of it. I was fine. Barely got any eye drops in my nose. I tell you that to show how easy it is to get confused and accidentally misuse things.
I’m assuming that’s how a man whose case report was published in BMJ Case Reports, brought to our attention thanks to Gizmodo, “accidentally” inhaled superglue, creating a lesion in his lung. But maybe I’m giving him too much credit.
How exactly does a grown man accidentally huff liquid adhesive? The Belgian medical report doesn’t elaborate on the specific mechanics of the inciting incident, but we can assume shenanigans were afoot.
What we do know is the guy went to the emergency room complaining of severe abdominal pain. A CT scan revealed kidney stones, but it also revealed a weird nodule in his lungs. Lung cancer? Maybe, the doctors thought. But the guy wasn’t a smoker.
The Super Glue-induced condition lasted for nearly a decade
Further testing downgraded the mass to a pneumatocele, a thin-walled, gas-filled cyst often found in babies who have suffered lung infections or trauma. The man, who was in his 40s, had not recently been a baby, so that was ruled out.
The doctors were stumped until the man suddenly remembered he’d recently been inhaling a bunch of superglue. Maybe that could be it?
Somehow, the guy who ripped some superglue up his schnoz was totally fine. Pneumatoceles normally shrink and vanish on their own over time, but long-term imaging scans showed that his glue-induced cyst just hung around for another nine years. It hasn’t become malignant or caused any respiratory issues.
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