A 66-year-old Thai woman who suffered a venomous snakebite and developed a mass in her leg 50 years later is the topic of a new journal article about a case that puzzled doctors for years.
Researchers at the Prince of Songkla University in Thailand detailed the case
last month in the Journal of Medical Case Reports. The woman was just 14 when she was bitten on the leg by a Malayan pit viper, the report stated.
She thought nothing of the injury after it healed, until an X-ray revealed a calcified mass under the skin of her leg some 50 years later.
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"Doctors suspected that, because of the snakebite, the woman had developed a condition called compartment syndrome; the name refers to sections of muscle that are held together, along with nerves and blood vessels, by a tough tissue called the fascia,
which does not stretch easily," LiveScience.com reported. "The woman's compartment syndrome had been left untreated."
Dr. Darren Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor of Radiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, told LiveScience.com that compartment syndrome is typically misdiagnosed as a tumor.
"Compartment syndrome usually happens below the knee," Fitzpatrick said. "You have a big group of muscles there, and they are in kind of a tight compartment."
"If the muscles start to swell from trauma or injury, they can run out of space, and that could result in compromised blood flow," he continued. "That's certainly a very plausible reason as to why this could have happened in this case."
The woman's mass grew so large that it ultimately split the skin and doctors had to operate to remove it. The wound healed with no complications, researchers said in the report.
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