Most hiccups disappear before anyone thinks twice about them. Once they last more than 48 hours, doctors stop calling them ordinary and classify them as persistent. That threshold mattered for a 65-year-old man in Lebanon whose four days of persistent hiccups turned out to be his body's only obvious signal of a pus-filled cavity in his lung.
Physicians affiliated with Lebanon's University of Balamand described the case in Clinical Medicine Insights: Case Reports, under the title "When Hiccups Speak Louder Than Cough." Their takeaway applies well beyond one patient: "Persistent hiccups may be the sole presenting symptom of serious thoracic pathology."
