Teen's tongue piercing linked to
pain The
teenager said the stabbing pains in her face felt like electrical shocks
that lasted 10 to 30 seconds and struck 20 to 30 times a day. Her doctors
diagnosed trigeminal neuralgia, a nerve disorder sometimes called "suicide
disease" because of the excruciating and dispiriting pain it
causes. Doctors
tried painkillers, then stronger medication, but in the end, a cure proved
more simple: The young woman removed the metal stud from her pierced
tongue. Two
days later her pain vanished. The
account in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association is the
latest documentation of complications, some life-threatening, linked to
tongue piercing. Other
problems include tetanus, heart infections, brain abscess, chipped teeth
and receding gums. One woman developed so much scar tissue that it
resembled what she called a "second tongue." In
the newly reported case, the young Italian woman's mouth jewelry
apparently irritated a nerve running along the jaw under her tongue. That
nerve is connected to the trigeminal nerve, one of the largest in the
head. "There
are people who have been dropped to their knees" by trigeminal neuralgia,
said Alana Greca, a registered nurse and director of patient support for
the Trigeminal Neuralgia Association. "That's how intense and how
horrendous the pain can be." The
teenager is lucky her pain disappeared, Greca said. "Certainly,
this was an isolated case, an extremely rare complication of this kind of
piercing," said Dr. Marcelo Galarza, a neurosurgeon at Villa Maria Cecilia
Hospital in Ravenna, Italy, who reported the case to the
journal. The
tongue is "a particularly dangerous place to pierce" because it is rich in
blood vessels that can spread infection to major organs and because it is
near important nerves and the upper airway, he said. Jeanne
Fritch, owner of Personal Art, a piercing and tattooing studio in Lake
Station, Ind., said she has not heard of a similar case in her 21 years in
business. Fritch
recommended people interested in tongue piercing see only professional,
experienced piercers and use only "implant grade" metal jewelry. Good
mouth hygiene while the tongue heals also is important, Fritch
said. Stefania
Fraccalvieri, the patient in the report, is now 21 and a student in Rome.
Her advice to people considering tongue piercing: "Don't do that. My
experience was so bad. I was so sick and now I feel much
better." ___ On
the Net: JAMA:
http://jama.ama-assn.org