They say it’s always the things we love that hurt us the most in life, which is exactly what a man from China found when he suffered a collapsed lung from singing too much karaoke.
The man, identified only by his surname Wang, reportedly started to feel chest pains after singing 10 high pitched songs in a row.
Doctors later said the strain placed on the 65-year-old’s lung had prompted it to collapse, according to the South China Morning Post.
Wang, from Nanchang county in Jianxi province, told video site PearVideo, as reported by Morning Post:
I was very excited in the heat of the moment and after singing a few songs with very high notes, I found myself having breathing difficulties.
Wang said this was unusual, because he’d sung the same songs he regularly sings on karaoke, and had never previously had any issues in hitting the top notes, but this time he was left out of breath with pains in his left lung.
The singing enthusiast first ignored the pain he was feeling, however it’s said to have gotten unbearable once he got back home, local news reported.
Wang was taken to his local hospital the next day, where doctors told him he’d suffered a collapsed lung.
Peng Bin-fei, a doctor who works in the emergency department of Nanchang hospital, told PearVideo that Wang’s condition could easily have proved fatal.
He said:
The patient suffered a lung collapse because of the high lung pressure caused by singing high notes.
Bin-fei added that this particular injury is more common in men, specifically those who are middle-aged or older.
He continued:
It’s better to not sing for a period of over two hours.
The bizarre incident soon went viral on social media, prompting one person to joke ‘this man really sings for his life’.
Another commented: ‘Never imagined this could really happen, I feel lucky that I have a deep voice’.
Yeah, I’m not really sure that’s how it works, but there’s a lesson to be learned for us all here.
A collapsed lung is when air escapes from the lung and the air fills the space outside the lung, between the lung and the chest wall. This then puts pressure on the lung, so it’s unable to expand as much as it normally does when you take a breath.
In severe cases, it can be a life-threatening condition.
Here’s wishing Mr Wang a full recovery.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.