CHENNAI • Doctors in Chennai, India, faced one of their biggest challenges when they operated on a patient and removed a live cockroach from the top of her nasal passage.

According to The New Indian Express, a 42-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital after she felt "strange" sensations around her nose and eyes.

Before she experienced the symptoms, she recalled that an insect had crept into her nostril, making its way inside her head. She tried to blow her nose to expel the cockroach but it successfully climbed up the inside of her nose.

The results of her nasal endoscopy displayed the menacing cockroach that had been sitting on her skull between her eyes for 12 hours.

"This is the first such case I have seen in my three decades of practice," said Dr M.N. Shankar from the Stanley Medical College Hospital.

The woman said that before she approached the doctors last Wednesday, she had suffered burning sensations and inexplicable pain.

"There was a tingling, crawling sensation. Whenever it moved, it gave me a burning sensation in my eyes."

The Times of India reported that the bug clung on to her nasal tissue even as it was being vacuumed out with a suction apparatus.

Said Dr Shankar: "We had to use a combination of suction and forceps to finally pull it out." After 45 minutes, the live cockroach finally emerged from the patient's nose.

Separately, a man in Chengdu, southern China, sprayed insecticide into his ear to kill a cockroach that had been trapped there for three days.

According to the Chengdu Economic Daily, the insect crawled into the 60-year-old man's ear last Wednesday, and he had tried using toothpicks and tweezers to remove it. After killing the cockroach, he had to go to hospital to have the insect's carcass removed.