O'Keefe et al. Such masses have rarely been reported following a snakebite, but they have been seen following other types of traumatic injury to muscles, according to the report's authors, who are researchers at the Prince of Songkla University in Thailand. In the present study, the patient had a history of snake bite and the physical examination showed sequelae of untreated compartment syndrome.
– It was a slowww reaction. When she was 14, a girl in Thailand got bit in the leg by a poisonous snake called the Malayan pit viper. A half-century later, she showed up at the doctor with a painful mass in that same leg, reports LiveScience, picking up on a writeup in the Journal of Medical Case Reports. Doctors first diagnosed the mass as calcific myonecrosis, the result of the venom destroying muscle tissue, when the woman was 66. Five years later, the still-growing mass actually came through her skin, and doctors surgically removed it without further complications. (Click to read about the discovery of a snake long thought extinct.)