Photo: Dermnetz.org
Doctors found long, black, hair-like fibres covering the surface of a man’s tongue after he had a stroke and was put on a pureed diet.
Photo: Dermnetz.org
Yuck! You can say that again! A man’s tongue turned black and ‘hairy’ after he was put on a pureed diet following a stroke.
The 50-year-old man developed a thick carpet of dead skin and bacteria on his tongue within two months of eating blended meals and soups.
According to a report by the Jama Dermatology the man suffered a stroke three months earlier, which paralysed his whole left side, including his face, and made it difficult to chew.
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“Three months prior, he had experienced a cerebrovascular incident with dense hemiplegia, and his caregivers first noticed the black pigmentation over the dorsum of the tongue 15 days before presentation.
“He was being fed a diet of pureed food and liquids and was taking oral antiplatelets and antihypertensives,” the report stated.
“On examination, he did not have a fever and was conscious and oriented, with left-sided motor weakness. The dorsal aspect of his tongue showed a thick black coating that was yellowish toward the medial and proximal parts.”
Doctors diagnosed the man with lingua villosa nigra after taking mucus samples from his tongue.
A hairy tongue is an unusual, harmless condition characterised by a ‘hairy’ enlargement and discolouration of the filiform papillae. The filiform papillae are tiny conical bumps found on the surface of the front two-thirds of the tongue that do not carry taste buds.
It is also known as black hairy tongue and lingua villosa nigra.
Hairy tongue most often occurs in adults over 40 years of age and is rare in infants [1].
A range of medications has been linked to a hairy tongue, including penicillin, erythromycin, tetracycline, doxycycline, lansoprazole, olanzapine, bismuth [1], erlotinib [2], linezolid [3].
Other factors that may cause and/or aggravate hairy tongue include:
Writing in the Jama Dermatology journal, the doctors said: ‘The patient and caregivers were given advice regarding proper cleansing measures, and the discoloration resolved after 20 days.’
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