Just in case you need it, here’s another reason why you should avoid having your nose or mouth anywhere near a bottle of glue, courtesy of a recent case study.
Doctors in Belgium detailed a man in his 40s who developed a strange lesion in his lungs after accidentally inhaling superglue. Thankfully, the lesion wasn’t cancerous as originally feared and appears to have caused no harm, but it’s stuck around in his lungs for at least nine years.
“I was relieved when I was informed that the lesion was not malignant,” the man said in a patient perspective accompanying the paper, which was published this month in BMJ Case Reports.
A sticky but resolved situation
According to the report, the man initially sought care at an emergency department for severe abdominal pain.
He underwent a CT scan, which revealed kidney stones. The imaging also revealed the presence of a nodule in his lungs, prompting more tests. Though the man had no history of smoking, doctors did worry at first that he might have lung cancer. After further evaluation, however, the lesion was considered benign.
The man, it turned out, had something known as a pneumatocele—a thin-walled cyst-like cavity that’s filled with gas. Pneumatoceles mostly occur in infants, making this case already unusual. Even stranger, they tend to form in response to lung infections or injury, neither of which the man had recently experienced. A few weeks before the ER visit, however, he did recall accidentally inhaling superglue.
Given the lack of any other clear explanation, it’s likely the man’s lesion was caused by the glue reaching his airways, which is known as pulmonary aspiration. Without a biopsy of lung tissue, it’s not possible to definitively rule out other possibilities, the doctors wrote. The aspiration of food or other foreign substances into the lungs can sometimes cause serious trouble, but the man seemed to be fine otherwise. Still, they decided to keep an eye on the situation with regular imaging tests.
Pneumatoceles typically shrink and disappear on their own. In this case, the man’s lesion continued to linger around for another nine years. Still, the imaging also showed that it remained harmless, further supporting the doctors’ diagnosis.
Though pneumatoceles are rare in adults, the authors hope their report shows that glue aspiration can be a potential cause. And they point out that the condition can be managed conservatively with monitoring. That said, I’ll personally be keeping my mouth firmly shut the next time I use superglue for a crafting or home repair project.
