Hot ghost pepper burns hole in man’s esophagus

Ghost pepper. File Photo

Eating spicy food adds a definite “kick” into one’s dining experience, but one American man found out that it could have terrifying consequences.

The Journal of Emergency Medicine recounted an incident about a 47-year-old man who ate a ghost pepper during an eating contest in San Francisco, California, which tore a one-inch hole in his esophagus.

Upon consumption of a hamburger laden with a ghost pepper puree, the unidentified contestant was driven into a violent fit of vomiting.

In an effort to calm the ensuing inferno, the man guzzled six glasses of water but the torture kept on and he finally called for medical help.

He was immediately escorted to an emergency room at UCSF Medical Center and intubated in an operating table, the report said. Doctors were shocked to discover a 2.5-cm rupture in the distal esophagus.

They also found a collection of food debris and air in his chest, which caused his lung to collapse.

The man’s unique condition was so severe that he was hospitalized for 23 days and was sent home with a gastric tube in his abdomen.

Senior author of the study and UCSF associate professor of emergency medicine Craig Smollin described the man’s predicament. “There are many people who have ghost peppers and most people don’t develop any type of severe symptoms,” he said, adding that the pepper only caused a slight tear but that his reaction made it worse.

The ghost pepper, or bhut jolokia, is one of the hottest spices on earth and is more than twice hotter than the habañero pepper.

The scorching pepper measures more than 1,000,000 units on the Scoville scale, which gauges a pepper’s heat.  Khristian Ibarrola