Bizarre! Septuagenarian's tongue threat to life after it turned black

Tokyo, Aug 07: A bizarre incident! A 71 year old man was admitted to hospital as his tongue swelled up and turned black. Suddenly, his tongue became so large that it blocked his airways and when doctors tried to help him breathe his heart stopped twice.

Reportedly, the incident took place in the Japanese city of Tsu, about 250 miles (400km) south of Tokyo. The septuagenarian patient's ordeal left him in intensive care for a week and in hospital for two months. The patient was admitted in Mie University Hospital.

The injury was caused by haemophilia, a blood clotting disorder. This makes the body unable to clot blood on its own and triggers life-threatening bleeding. Haemophilia is a genetic disorder which means the body lacks clotting agents in the blood - it is thought to affect around 400,000 people worldwide.

He was first admitted to hospital because he was struggling to speak or swallow, and his wife had noticed darkness on his tongue. 'His tongue was extremely swollen, dark purple in color, and protruded from his mouth,' the medics, led by Dr Yuki Kageyama, wrote in a case report.

The scan reports of the patient's neck and chest revealed he had a 'massive tongue haematoma' a bruise-like swelling caused by blood building up beneath the skin.

Doctors gave him drugs to help the body clot and stop the bleeding itself but the man's tongue just got bigger and more bloody as time went on.

He started struggling to breathe and was admitted to intensive care, where doctors tried to put a tube down his windpipe to help him breathe. But while they were trying to do so the patient 'rapidly developed an airway obstruction and cardiac arrest' and his heart stopped.

Even air breathed in through the nose must pass the back of the tongue to get down the airway and into the lungs, so he was left completely unable to breathe. The doctors performed CPR for ten minutes and managed to bring him back to life before doing emergency surgery to cut a hole in his neck for him to breathe through.

On the next day, it took doctors 'several hours' to try and stop the bleeding caused by the surgery and the man's heart stopped again when they did. This time it took nine minutes of CPR to bring him back to life.

After three days he had another operation to install a more stable airway in his neck for him to breathe through, and this one was successful.

And after spending sixty four days in hospital he had developed pneumonia following cardiac arrest - he was finally discharged and sent elsewhere for rehabilitation.