This condition was a head-scratcher for doctors.
A man in Turkey stunned medical teams when his head randomly began swelling to a concerning degree after spending time on the beach in the city of Zonguldak on August 23, CEN reported.
On the third day, Caner Arik, 33 — an Istanbul call center worker on vacation in the Black Sea in the country’s northern region — spotted the swelling and distortion of his facial features and rushed to seek medical attention for the bizarre circumstances.
His scalp was suffering from an extremely rare condition — one rarely seen beyond a person’s feet or hands — called heat oedema, according to doctors at Zonguldak Bulent Ecevit University Health Application and Research Centre.
“We have never encountered such a case before,” said Emergency Medicine Specialist Dr. Abdullah Cuneyt Hocagi. “After excluding the causes of localized oedema in the body, we decided that the swelling on the forehead of the patient was a ‘heat oedema’…we started treatment for this.”
In standard cases, heat oedemas usually come from a build-up of fluids into the hands and legs by way of downward gravity. They are caused by expanded blood vessels brought on by high temperatures, according to the University of Michigan.
A hot day at the beach — at a time Dr. Hocagi said the nation was experiencing severe humidity — serves as a shining condition for heat oedema.
The doctor also came up with a rational explanation as to why Arik contradicted the heat oedema.
“This happened when our patient was lying by the sea, while he was wearing a hat that would prevent circulation,” Dr. Hocagi said. “That’s why it’s an interesting case…We will publish this situation as a rare heat-induced skin oedema on the scalp at an international congress.”
Now Arik is recovering at home and doctors believe his symptoms will be passing soon. He granted medical workers permission to conduct a scientific study on his heat oedema.
