A 20-year-old Swiss man was admitted to the Cantonal Hospital in Winterthur with a case described as "unusual" in the journal Radiology Case Reports. The man had severe shortness of breath and pain in his chest. He told medics that it began with a sharp pain in his chest. An X-ray revealed "profound" amounts of trapped air inside his chest outside his lungs, and that it had travelled to other parts of his body, "reaching up until the base of the skull". His face had swollen, and cracking sounds could be heard when doctors pressed their fingers on his neck, chest and arms.
The man was diagnosed as suffering from spontaneous pneumomediastinum, a condition in which the air sacs in the lung rupture under high pressure and air leaks out into the chest cavity. It usually results from strenuous exercise, violent coughing fits or projectile vomiting, all of which put stress on the respiratory system. The patient was given oxygen, painkillers and antibiotics, and kept in hospital for four days, after which he was discharged having fully recovered.
dailymail.co.uk, 13th April 2022