Stricter rules were employed during this year's entrance exams at the university, following cheating scandals in recent years, which meant that students would only be allowed to leave the exam room one by one.

The young student finished her exam at 1.40pm – but had to wait forty minutes to leave the room in spite of her desperate pleas to the examiners.

“She suffers from a urinary tract problem and was visibly suffering,” the girl's big sister, Floriana, told Today.it.

“But they told her that if she went to the bathroom her test would be annulled.”

And so the student, eager to book a coveted place on the medical course, suffered silently until she was finally allowed to leave.

“But the long wait caused serious consequences,” explained Floriana, who had to take her sister to hospital shortly afterwards.

“As soon as she got to the bathroom she was bleeding due to a hemorrhagic cystitis.”

“In addition to the physical damage caused by her holding her wee longer than she should have, there was moral damage too.”

But things soon got even worse for the student.

After returning from the hospital she went back to the university to collect her iPhone, which she had handed to the examiners at the start of the test, but her phone had 'disappeared'.

The girl's family is requesting compensation from the university's examination board.