A 17-year-old girl in China has reportedly had a live cockroach pulled out of her ear canal after going to the hospital to treat pain in her ear.

The young patient experienced discomfort after waking up from her sleep last Wednesday. Doctors said the insect could have crawled into her ear during her sleep before getting stuck.

It is thought that cockroaches crawl into people's ears in search of food. 

The unnamed girl, from the city of Nanchang in Jiangxi Province, told doctors she felt something was moving in her ear and it was painful. 

Footage released by Chinese video site Pear shows the patient screaming 'it hurts' whenever a doctor touched her head during examination.

After checking the patient's ear using a microscope, doctors saw a 'small insect' in her ear canal. 

'We immediately removed it and realised that it was a live cockroach,' one doctor told Pear.  

It is not uncommon to see media reports of people having cockroaches removed from their ears.

In May last year, a man from Florida woke up and realised there was a live cockroach in his ear. ER doctors later discovered that the roach had already laid eggs in his ear before having the insect removed.

In the same month also in Florida, a woman had a cockroach stuck in her ear for a week after it crawled into her head during her sleep.

A human's ear is a 'safe place' for cockroaches to eat and rest, Professor Coby Schal, from North Carolina State University, who studies insects, previously told The Verge.