World of the Bizarre

Too much karaoke gives man a collapsed lung

By T.K. Randall
August 18, 2019

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) For most of us, the ordeal of singing pop songs in front of an audience is punishment enough, but for one man in China recently, singing karaoke almost had fatal consequences.

The 65-year-old, who has been identified only as Wang, sang at such intensity and for so long that he started to experience difficulty breathing as well as pains in his chest.

When he visited a hospital the next day, doctors discovered that his lung had literally collapsed "because of the high lung pressure caused by singing high notes."The condition, which is known as pneumothorax, happens when air is rerouted into the area between the lung and the chest wall, putting pressure on the lung and causing it to collapse.

It is believed however that Wang must have had a pre-existing condition beforehand.

"Typically, a collapsed lung requires some degree of architectural abnormalities within the lung," said Dr. Enid Neptune at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. "An absolutely, totally normal lung usually doesn't suffer spontaneous pneumothorax in the absence of trauma."

Source: Live Science

Tags: Karaoke, Lung