Man has cannabis removed from his nose after 18 years

It's not known what happened to the cannabis after it was removed. Photo / File

An Australian man has had a bag of cannabis removed from his nose - 18 years after it first became lodged there during a smuggling attempt in prison.

The bizarre case was reported by the British Medical Journal with the inventive title: "A nose out of joint: first reported case of prison-acquired marijuana-based rhinolith".

A rhinolith is the medical term for a mass that builds up in the nasal cavity.

As reported by Murray Smith from Westmead Hospital in Sydney, the man put the package inside his nose to get it past prison guards almost two decades ago.

"During a prison visit, the patient's girlfriend supplied him with a small quantity of marijuana, inside a rubber balloon," Smith and his colleagues said.

"In order to evade detection, the patient inserted the package inside his right nostril.

"Despite effectively smuggling the package past the prison guards, the patient then accidentally pushed the package deeper into his nostril and mistakenly believed he had swallowed it."

The mass was revealed by a CT scan. Photo / British Medical Journal

The man sought treatment after suffering from headaches and blocked sinuses and a CT scan revealed a 1.9cm x 1.1cm grey lesion in his right nasal cavity.

The doctors then removed the mass, which they found to be a "rubber capsule containing degenerate vegetable or plant matter".

He then remembered the smuggling incident and admitted that the plant matter was cannabis.

It's not known what was done with the drug after it was removed.