A jogger wearing an iPod was struck by lightning and burned on his chest, neck and face - with the burns tracing the path of the earphones - doctors in Canada have reported.
The 37-year-old patient's eardrums were ruptured and the tiny bones in his middle ears were dislocated, the doctors wrote in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. The incident happened in 2005.
The man's jawbone broke in four places and both jaw joints were dislocated, probably because the electric current made his jaw muscles contract violently, Eric Heffernan, Dr Peter Munk and Dr Luck Louis, of Vancouver General Hospital, wrote in their letter. The metal in the earphones helped channel the current and cause the injuries, they said.
"Although the use of a device such as an iPod may not increase the chances of being struck by lightning, in this case, the combination of sweat and metal earphones directed the current to, and through, the patient's head," they said. Mr Heffernan said: "I think that this has the potential to occur with any sort of headphones."
Two years later, more than half the patient's hearing is gone and he cannot hear high-frequency sounds.
The National Weather Service has estimated that a person's odds of being struck by lightning are one in 5,000.
