Doctors have discovered some COVID-19 patients are developing Macroglossia, a condition where someone’s tongue is inflamed and begins to swell excessively they can not speak or eat.
Dr. James Melville, one of the top researchers of the condition, is said to be aware of nine cases where a COVID-19 patient developed the condition.
He said :-
‘It’s actually a relatively common condition, but not to the degree of those patients. Those are what we consider massive or giant macroglossia and those are extremely rare,’
One of the patients treated by Dr Melville – Mr Anthony Jones, woke up after surviving a critical case of COVID-19 that left him on a ventilator with his tongue swollen more than its normal size.
Although patient jones has finally recovered, Dr. Melville and other doctors remain shocked over what might cause the rare complication.
Dr. Melville was said to have treated the first two cases of COVID-related macroglossia early in the pandemic last year, and since then have been seven new cases of the condition reportedly related to COVID-19 and each on it’s own a rare and massive.
Anthony Jones, from Houston Texas who developed the condition after being hospitalized with the virus is an example of such rare and massive version of the condition.
Jones had to use a ventilator in order to handle the virus, and when he woke up after treatment, his tongue was so swollen that he could neither speak or eat.
Dr. Melville had to perform surgery to reduce the extra large size of Jones’s tongue and reduce the inflammation.
The operation was successfully carried out, but the science behind the development of giant macroglossia in the case of jones is still a mystery to doctors.