The symptoms began back in 2007. The then-54-year-old was fighting a mounting struggle to breathe each day. His lungs were barely functioning at a third of their full capacity.
Though he had been diagnosed with hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP), a serious condition where the lungs are inflamed, five years earlier, his doctors were still unsure what the root cause was.
The man wasn’t a smoker, he didn’t have fungus or mold growing in his house, nor was he suffering from any other diseases that could cause breathing problems.
The doctors had no leads.
In September 2014, five months after his initial doctor’s appointment to diagnose his breathing struggles, the man returned to the doctor. His symptoms were worse than they’d ever been.
He breathed at a rapid pace, but his blood severely lacked oxygen. An X-ray of his chest indicated he might have pneumonia – or was suffering from other symptoms of HP. The doctors had no other choice but to attempt treating him with drugs they thought would combat any bacteria that could cause various strains of pneumonia.
None of these treatment methods worked. The man died on October 20, 2014.
Now, two years after the man’s death, doctors have finally discovered what was sitting at the root of his illness: “bagpipe lung.”
The doctors hadn’t thought to inquire into the man’s hobbies during their initial medical investigation; the patient’s daily hobby of playing the bagpipes had gone unnoticed and unobserved.
His instrument, however, was housing a mixture of Paecilomyces variotti, Fusarium oxysporum, Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, and Penicillium species. Doctors were able to grow samples of all of these bacteria in a petri dish; they formed green, orange, and red molds.
There was yeast on the mouthpiece of the instrument, fungi on the neck and other regions, and mold growing inside the instrument’s case. The man had been inhaling mold and bacteria every time he’d played his bagpipe.
This isn’t, unfortunately, the first time a person’s wind instrument has been the cause of lung diseases. Doctors are now aiming to be more vigilant about investigating a patients’ daily hobbies when diagnosing symptoms in the future and beseech wind players to be just as vigilant about cleaning their instruments.
