MUMBAI: When 70-year-old Laxmibai (name changed) first got a nose bleed, no one really paid much attention to it. Only when the bleeding continued for five days and two hospitals couldn't find the cause for it that her family took her to civic-run Sion Hospital. The doctors there came up with the right diagnosis: she had maggots in her nose.

The doctors could not fathom how Laxmibai could have got the maggots in her nose. The woman, a Bhiwandi resident, had an explanation though: a housefly had entered her nose on Monday, a day before she started bleeding. She was taken to two other hospitals where she was given tablets and nose drops but none of the doctors could diagnose that the housefly's larvae were at the root of all trouble.

"The fly laid eggs inside her nose. We removed more than 40 maggots from her nose on Friday. The worms had started feeding on her flesh, due to which the patient was bleeding and in pain. Now we have cleaned the wound and she will be fine if there is no further infection,'' said Dr Mustafa Kapadia, ENT surgeon at Sion Hospital.

Chatrapati Bajage, Laxmibai's son, said though she had insisted that the bleeding was due to the fly, they thought she was over-reacting. "But her bleeding never stopped. We got her to Sion Hospital and the doctors there told us that the fly had laid eggs in her nose. They have treated her and now she is fine,'' he said.

A fly lays eggs in moist areas and the maggots break out of the eggs within eight to 20 hours. Immediately, they start feeding on the place the eggs were laid on. Generally, maggots infest an open wound.

"This was the third maggot incident in two months. Mostly, we have beggars worms in their open wounds," Kapadia said.