A 66-year-old woman in Thailand had a calcified mass removed from her leg, which was caused by a snake bite she got over fifty years ago. A Malayan pit viper bit the woman when she was 14 years old, but ten years ago, she started to notice a growth on her leg.

A 66-year-old woman in Thailand had a calcified mass removed from her leg, which was caused by a snake bite she got over fifty years ago.

A Malayan pit viper bit the woman when she was 14 years old, but ten years ago, she started to notice a growth on her leg.

An X-ray showed that it was a cavity surrounded by a calcified membrane, like an eggshell, caused by a medical condition called compartment syndrome.

The growth eventually broke through the woman’s skin, and she had it surgically removed, after which she recovered within a month according to doctor’s reports.

Doctor Darren Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor of Radiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York who wasn't involved in treating the patient, commented on the case saying: “If the muscles start to swell from trauma or injury, they can run out of space, and that could result in compromised blood flow. That's certainly a very plausible reason as to why this could have happened in this case.”

These kinds of side effects aren’t usually associated with snake bites but rather with other muscle injuries, and are also sometimes mistaken for tumors.