Lake Orion Family Dentistry Blog

Horrifying Tongue-Piercing Complication from CompuServe 10-18-06

They felt like electrical shocks, those stabbing, needle-sharp pains in her face that lasted as long as 30 seconds and struck 20 to 30 times a day. Stefania Fraccalvieri of Rome, Italy was only a teenager, but doctors diagnosed her with trigeminal neuralgia, a disorder of the nervous system in which the pain is so excruciating the ailment has been nicknamed the "suicide disease." The Associated Press reports that Fraccalvieri's physician pumped her full of painkillers, upping the medication when lower doses didn't work. Then one day, she removed the metal stud from her pierced tongue. Within two days, the pain was gone. Totally vanished.

This startling account of a tongue piercing gone terribly wrong has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Such piercings are rife with complications, some of which are life-threatening and include tetanus, heart infection, brain abscess, chipped teeth and receding gums. AP notes that one woman who had her tongue pierced developed so much scar tissue that it resembled what she called a "second tongue."

In this newly reported case, the metal stud Fraccalvieri wore in her mouth irritated a nerve that runs along the jaw under her tongue. Since that nerve is connected to the trigeminal nerve, one of the largest in the head, it produced the agonizing attacks. "There are people who have been dropped to their knees" by trigeminal neuralgia, Alana Greca, a registered nurse and director of patient support for the Trigeminal Neuralgia Association, told AP. "That's how intense and how horrendous the pain can be."

Dr. Marcelo Galarza, a neurosurgeon at Villa Maria Cecilia Hospital in Ravenna, Italy who treated Fraccalvieri and reported on the condition in JAMA, said, "Certainly, this was an isolated case, an extremely rare complication of this kind of piercing." Still he warned that the tongue is a dangerous place for a piercing since it is rich in blood vessels and can spread infection to major organs. Still, Fraccalvieri warned others about tongue piercing. "Don't do that," she said. My experience was so bad. I was so sick and now I feel much better."