A teenager suffering from an extremely rare brain syndrome underwent routine knee surgery and mysteriously woke up speaking a different language.
The 17-year-old high schooler, who spoke Dutch, was admitted to a hospital in the Netherlands for orthopedic surgery under anesthesia after getting injured while playing soccer in 2022.
While the surgery was successful, the boy surprisingly woke up speaking in English with an American accent and insisted that he was in Utah.
Prior to this incident, he only spoke English during class in school, but after the procedure he could no longer speak nor understand his native language. He was also unable to recognize his parents.
According to the case report, the teenager had no history of psychiatric symptoms and no relevant medical family history that could explain what he was experiencing.
When medical staff could not get the patient to speak a single word of Dutch for hours after his surgery, they called for a psychiatric consultation – but doctors could not find an answer for his sudden condition.
About 18 hours after waking, the teenager began understanding Dutch again but continued to communicate exclusively in English. His ability to speak Dutch only began returning gradually the next day after a visit from friends.
After the boy was sent home three days after surgery, doctors began scouring medical literature to find an answer to the boy’s case and discovered he had temporarily developed foreign language syndrome.
A Dutch-speaking teenager who underwent routine knee surgery mysteriously woke up speaking English
Foreign Language Syndrome or Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare neurological condition where individuals switch from their native language and fixate for a period of time on a second language.
The condition may also cause a patient to develop an accent that sounds foreign but they are not actually speaking a different language.
FAS and FLS can affect the speed you speak at, pitch, tone, articulation, volume and stressing of syllables and can be caused by severe head injury, stroke, brain tumors and bleeding in the brain.
FAS and FLS can also develop as result of damage to the speech center of the brain called Broca’s area.
Located on the frontal lobe, this area is crucial to a person’s ability to articulate ideas and use words accurately in spoken and written language.
Since being discovered by Pierre Marie, a French neurologist in 1907, there are only about 100 confirmed cases of FLS and FAS on record.
Detailed physical and mental health exams are usually conducted to diagnose the conditions – both of which the Dutch teen underwent.
Unlike typical cases, the boy revealed he was aware he had been speaking and only able to understand English post-surgery.
He managed, however, to make a complete recovery within several weeks.
The doctors said in the report: ‘In addition, he remembered that he had been unable to recognize his parents and that he had believed he was in the USA.
‘The neurologist reported no abnormalities in the complete neurological examination. The neurologist saw no indication for further diagnostics; therefore, no electroencephalogram (EEG), neuroimaging, or neuropsychological examinations were performed near the event, and the patient was discharged a day later.
‘Three weeks after discharge from the hospital in a follow-up appointment at the psychiatric outpatient clinic, he reported that he was experiencing no difficulties using the Dutch language.
‘Furthermore, he experienced no other neurological complaints (for example, complaints regarding his senses). There were no changes in his mood and no presentation of anxiety, and his sleep was intact.
‘At three follow-up appointments (two months, five months and 10 months after discharge), these symptoms were gradually improving and there were no new symptoms reported nor observed.’
Anesthesia may cause disruptions to the brain’s ability to communicate – leading to developing FLS
The experts also noted that FLS is rarely seen in children and suspect they are the first to formally document a case of FLS in an adolescent.
In total, they found eight reported cases of FLS that were similar to that of the teenager.
While the boy is now living a normal life, doctors claim that ‘there is still much to be learned and further research is needed’ to understand how he developed a neurological condition while undergoing knee surgery under anesthesia.
A 2024 study published in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery suggests that anesthesia may cause disruptions to the brain’s ability to communicate – leading to developing FLS.
Anesthesia is thought to shut down major centers of the brain, halting communication within the cortex and thereby producing a state of unconsciousness.
While the exact mechanism is not fully understood, some experts believe that lingering anesthesia may create a sense of confusion and disorientation in patients – which can then manifest as difficulty speaking or understanding.
