A birthday is supposed to end with cake, not a chest tube. But for one healthy 20-year-old university student in Algeria, blowing out his candles brought on a sudden, stabbing pain on the left side of his chest. His left lung had collapsed.
Doctors at Mustapha University Hospital Center in Algiers described the case in a peer-reviewed case report in the journal Cureus, published Sept. 19, 2025. The patient did not smoke and had no significant medical history. What he did have, the authors noted, was a slender build: 1.87 meters (about 6 feet 2 inches) tall and 71 kilograms (about 157 pounds), with a body mass index of 20.3.
