Man Tries To Stop Sneeze, Tears Hole In Throat

If you are about to sneeze, do not pinch your nose and close your mouth shut. (Photo: Getty) A hole in your throat is nothing to sneeze at, . And the case report showed the dangers of pinching your nose and closing your mouth in an attempt to stifle a sneeze.

A man in his 30s tried doing this and was left with a hole is his trachea, which can be a hole lot of trouble. This man who had a history of allergies was wearing a seat belt while driving his car when he felt the need to sneeze and in a pinch tried to keep the sneeze from exiting from either his nostrils or his mouth. This led to quite a pressure-filled situation.

Normally, sneezing can generate a pressure of one to two kilopascals in the upper airways which, in turn, can blast air and accompanying gunk out through your nose and mouth. But guess what happens when you pinch your nose shut and keep your mouth closed at the same time? Rather than rushing out of these holes, the air has no place to go. That can build up pressure your the upper airways that is up to 20 times higher than what a released sneeze would generate.

After this sneezus interruptus, the man began experiencing severe neck pain and eventually ended up in the emergency department of Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, UK. The four authors of the case report (Rasads Misirovs, Gary Hoey, Calum Carruthers and Samit Majumdar) work at this hospital. There doctors found the man’s neck to be swollen on both sides.

An X-ray of his neck revealed evidence of air where it wasn’t supposed to be, and a CT of the neck and chest with contrast showed a 2 mm by 2 mm by 5 mm in his trachea, otherwise known as his windpipe. Now, when you see a hole, your first inclination may be to cover it up, which, when the hole is in the trachea, might mean surgery. But since the hole in the man’s trachea was smaller than three centimeters and the esophagus seemed to be adequately covering the hole, the doctors opted to treat the man conservatively—not from a political sense but from a medical sense.

Instead of taking him to surgery, doctors simply gave him medications: paracetamol and codeine to control his pain and cetirizine as well as fluticasone propionate drops and xylometazoline hydrochloride drops in his nostrils to control his allergic rhinitis and nasal congestion symptoms. That first night in the hospital didn’t go so well for the man as his condition deteriorated eventually leading to his intubation—inserting a breathing tube down the man’s throat and hooking it up to a ventilator. But eventually the man recovered without any further treatment and was well enough to be discharged from the hospital.

Doctors advised against engaging strenuous physical activities for the next two weeks and, guess what, told him not to pinch his nose and keep his mouth closed in any attempt to suppress sneezes. A CT scan of his neck and chest five weeks later showed that everything had resolved in his neck. Keep in mind that making a medical case report typically means that something rare occurred.

You won’t usually see a case report about something like man sneezes on date, there is no second date. Indeed, spontaneous tracheal perforations—which is when you suddenly develop a hole in the trachea—are a rare thing in general. It may occur during a surgical procedure gone wrong or some type of injury around the neck such as what Lady Arya of House Stark did to Lord Baelish in .

Regardless of how rare such injuries may be, it’s not a good idea to completely block your nose and mouth while sneezing. Some have offered remedies on how to prevent a sneeze from even happening in the first place such as using your tongue to tickle the roof of your mouth, pressing a thumb on your upper lip just beneath your nose or saying the word, “Pickles” whenever you begin to feel a sneeze emerging. It’s not clear how effective these techniques may be.

And saying “Pickles” repeatedly without any real explanation during a date may not get you a second date, although it may get you extra pickles on your sandwich. But if these sneeze-preventing techniques do not succeed in preventing a sneeze, it’s better to just let it go, in the words of that song from the movie . Just make sure that you turn your head away from other people.

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