A healthy 21-year-old woman went to a U.S. Air Force hospital to have painful wisdom teeth removed. When she came out of general anesthesia, her native English had been pushed aside, and she was fixated on a second language, a rare phenomenon known as foreign language syndrome.
Air Force oral surgeons described the episode in a case report in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. What makes it stand out is the company it keeps. By the authors' count, only 12 cases had been reported before, and none involved a woman or an oral and maxillofacial procedure.
