Teenager forgot his native language after knee surgery (2 photos)

The young patient was diagnosed with foreign language syndrome, an extremely rare condition with only a few documented cases worldwide.





The nurse who first noticed that the patient was speaking exclusively in English after waking up from anesthesia assumed that he was experiencing a state of confusion that can occur when coming out of anesthesia.

However, when the teenager, who had only studied English in school, was unable to speak a word of his native language even after several hours, the medical team turned to specialists.

The young man was diagnosed with FLS (foreign language syndrome), a rare condition in which patients suddenly and involuntarily begin to speak another language instead of their native language for a certain period of time. A neurologist performed a full neurological examination, but found no abnormalities.



18 hours after the operation, the teenager could understand Dutch, but still could not speak it.

The next day, friends came to visit him, and suddenly he began to speak his native language fluently again. Since the return to Dutch was spontaneous, doctors did not consider it necessary to conduct neuropsychological tests, electroencephalograms (EEG), or other brain studies.

The patient was discharged three days after the operation.

What is Foreign Language Syndrome

FLS is very rare, with only nine cases reported in the medical literature. Most of these were white males who began speaking a language they learned later in life, having not been bilingual as children.

There have been cases where the syndrome has occurred after anesthesia. The authors of the report noted that the effects of anesthetics on cognitive function, as well as their gradual elimination from the central nervous system, can lead to awakening delirium.

Experts are unsure whether foreign language syndrome is a separate condition or simply a variant of awakening delirium.

The authors of the report emphasized that the syndrome is rare in children and believe that they may be the first to formally document a case of FLS in a teenager.