Story By: John Feng, Sub-Editor:  Joseph Golder, Agency: Asia Wire Report

These images show a university student who was left with a massively swollen upper lip that looks just like a sausage after he collided with a friend during a basketball game and kept on playing.

Images provided by plastic surgeon Lai Hsin-ti show the 20-year-old student whose upper lip was swollen to “four or five times” its normal size.

According to the medic with Chung-Ho Memorial Hospital, which is in Taiwan’s south-western port city of Kaohsiung, the freak injury happened during a basketball game when the student’s face collided with a friend’s elbow.

Doctor Lai said: “The patient had no visible external injuries, and his teeth were all fine, so he didn’t rest and kept on playing.

“He didn’t use an ice pack to stop it from swelling.

“A small artery in his lip burst, but because he didn’t treat it properly, it caused his lip to bleed and swell.”

The student said he tried to ignore the pain but woke up the following morning with the huge, enlarged lip.

Doctor Lai scheduled an operation for the patient, but he had to live with the ‘sausage lip’ for a week before his surgery.

He went out every day wearing a surgical mask, he admitted.

Doctors cut into his badly swollen lip and drained his blood before cleaning his wounds in a surgery requiring only local anaesthetics.

Doctor Lai, 32, whose research is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said: “I was shocked too!

“His upper lip was swollen to four or five times its normal size and was purple.”

The student has since recovered his normal lip size, the medic’s latest pictures show.

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