While waking up from knee surgery, the 17-year-old Dutch Teenager temporarily lost his ability to speak in his native language.
A 17-year-old boy Dutch Teenager in the Netherlands, was admitted to a hospital for knee surgery after getting injured while playing soccer. The surgery was successful, but when the patient woke up, he spoke exclusively in English and insisted that he was in the U.S.
According to the case study published in the Journal of Medical Case Reports , the teen lost the ability to understand and speak his native language for 24 hours after the orthopedic surgery, combined with a brief confused state, including disorientation of place and the inability to recognize his parents.
The study authors from Maastricht University Medical Center noted that during the period, he communicated in English, which he had learned during school classes but had never spoken outside of school. Further follow-up, including neuropsychological examination, revealed no indication of cognitive impairment.
Almost 18 hours after his surgery, the teen was able to understand Dutch but still couldn’t speak it. Some of the teen’s friends came to visit him the day after his surgery, and suddenly, he was able to understand and speak Dutch again.
The diagnosis:
Doctors diagnosed the teen with foreign language syndrome (FLS), a condition where patients suddenly and involuntarily begin using a second language instead of their native one for a period of time. There have been a few reported cases.
The language switch typically occurs postoperatively and spontaneously resolves after a short period of time. The primary cause of this switching remains unclear. There is speculation about the involvement of anesthesia, but its specific influence remains unclear.