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Don’t open unless you have a strong stomach

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noleclone2

Veteran Seminole Insider
May 4, 2015
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I am serious.



https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/577480/?__twitter_impression=true

“On Tuesday, The New England Journal of Medicine tweeted the most recent addition to its photo series of the most visually arresting medical anomalies. The image is of a mysterious, branchlike structure that, posted elsewhere, would probably pass for a cherry-red chunk of some underground root system or a piece of bright reef coral. But this is no creature of the deep. It’s a completely intact, six-inch-wide clot of human blood in the exact shape of the right bronchial tree, one of the two key tubular networks that ferry air to and from the lungs. ”
 
Thats incredible, wonder how much respiratory restriction that caused him.

It's like peeling play dough out of a form template. It really does look like a hunk of red seaweed.

On the list of making my stomach flip, this is like a 1 of 10. Maybe if we watched him hack it up.
 
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DFSNOLE said:
That had to hurt coming out.
Click to expand...
Probably not. Just like coughing up sputum. Not like it was a piece of his lung, just blood that pooled and clotted. I would think it would feel like a piece of spaghetti when you swallow it holding one end and pulling it back up.
 
noleclone2 said:
I am serious.

View embedded media


https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/577480/?__twitter_impression=true

“On Tuesday, The New England Journal of Medicine tweeted the most recent addition to its photo series of the most visually arresting medical anomalies. The image is of a mysterious, branchlike structure that, posted elsewhere, would probably pass for a cherry-red chunk of some underground root system or a piece of bright reef coral. But this is no creature of the deep. It’s a completely intact, six-inch-wide clot of human blood in the exact shape of the right bronchial tree, one of the two key tubular networks that ferry air to and from the lungs. ”
Click to expand...
Now that’s wicked cool! His skin color prolly went from pallid and clammy to pink in a hurry.
 
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NoleFan2U said:
I hope they evacuated the colony first otherwise PETA might be offended.
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Im sure it was a painless genocide if it happened that way. My guess is that the colony had already abandoned it though.

I believe the total mass of ants on this planet is equal or greater than the total mass of humans.

And I’m calling BS on the original story. There is no way a living person coffed up a perfect mold of his bronchial tubes, much less that they came out whole and in one shade of red.
 
Random_John said:
https://www.instructables.com/id/Quick-cheap-and-dirty-aluminum-melting-furnace-s/
Click to expand...
Yep, all you need to do is force air into a good fire.

Off the top of my head aluminum melts at about 1200 degrees which is relatively low. I think only lead and tin melt at a lower temp (out of common metals). Mercury and one or two others melt at room temperature.

How about this video though:

Aside from the obligatory “don’t try this at home”, that trick only works if your hand is wet.
 
Formerly Rockymtnole said:
Tribe could use that in his aquarium.
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Yep, it looks very similar to a red gorgonian.

bright-red-gorgonian-soft-coral-flares-from-a-sub-tropical-reef-australia_u-l-p2vnxv0.jpg


And I didn’t buy the story either until I saw the underlying claim came from a legit medical journal. Even still....I don’t 100% buy the claim, I’m more in the 51% believing it boat.
 
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Imtotallynottribe said:
Yep, it looks very similar to a red gorgonian.

And I didn’t buy the story either until I saw the underlying claim came from a legit medical journal. Even still....I don’t 100% buy the claim, I’m more in the 51% believing it boat.
Click to expand...

Admittedly, I didn't read the article earlier. After reading the article I get how it could have happened.

I'm a physics guy, not a biologist, but the physics didn't make any sense base on my prior assumption. I mistakenly thought the guy just came in and coughed that piece of coral up, rather than the fact that he was already in and they were playing chemistry/physics lab with his body. There are a number of issues I had with the idea.

One: that's an airway, not a blood vessel.
Two: blood normally takes a while to clot like that and it wouldn't look that fresh after a while
Three: In order to cough that up, he would have to have air in that lung and the clot would need to still be wet in order to overcome the friction of all that surface area.

The entire thing had to happen in a very short period of time.

My first thought was that he snorted something to cause the blood to almost instantly gel. That doesn't solve the problem of how the blood got there in the first place.

The article does kinda explain it though. The anticoagulants and blood flow pump he was on forced the blood into his lung and bronchial tubes. His body most likely was producing excess lymph fluids and a higher than normal concentration of fibrinogen which basically plasticized the blood into a cross between silly putty and oobleck (non Newtonian liquid). Since his lung was full of liquid (blood) when he coughed he generated enough force to launch that thing right out of him.

Sadly though his issues weren't over. They temporarily saved him, but he had far too much going on to live much longer.

It is amazing that the whole thing came out in one piece.
 
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Imtotallynottribe said:
Yep, it looks very similar to a red gorgonian.

And I didn’t buy the story either until I saw the underlying claim came from a legit medical journal. Even still....I don’t 100% buy the claim, I’m more in the 51% believing it boat.
Click to expand...

NEJM, along with JAMA, sit atop the medical journal food chain.

That Impella is a nifty little heart pump...
 
Last edited:
“At any given time, it is estimated that there are ten quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive. That's about 200 million insects for every human on the planet.”
 
It's definitely real. One of the doctors I follow on Twitter had something similar happen to a young patient...it wasn't that extensive, but bad things happen when your body can't clot right.
 
I think it's definitely real -- when he coughed it up it was probably a twisted mass of flexible rubber like cords that the doctors later separated and arranged into it tree-like pattern to show the bronchial branches.

Based on the article it appears this man had heart failure from aortic valve insufficiency/occlusion which necessitated a prosthetic aortic valve. If that wasn't bad enough he also had complete heart block which prevents synchronous contraction of the ventricles without pacemaker support.

It sounds like as his heart failure worsened he was placed on a VAD (assist device to help his L ventricle pump better) and given heparin. My guess is that his worsening heart failure led to much higher pressures in the blood vessels of the lungs. That in combination with the heparin would have created lots of small leaks in the blood vessels around the airways of the lungs, leading to a slow forming pool of blood formed into the shape of the airways.
 
KitingHigh said:
I'm a physics guy, not a biologist, but the physics didn't make any sense base on my prior assumption. I mistakenly thought the guy just came in and coughed that piece of coral up, rather than the fact that he was already in and they were playing chemistry/physics lab with his body.
.
One: that's an airway, not a blood vessel.
Two: blood normally takes a while to clot like that and it wouldn't look that fresh after a while
Three: In order to cough that up, he would have to have air in that lung and the clot would need to still be wet in order to overcome the friction of all that surface area.

My first thought was that he snorted something to cause the blood to almost instantly gel. That doesn't solve the problem of how the blood got there in the first place.

The article does kinda explain it though. The anticoagulants and blood flow pump he was on forced the blood into his lung and bronchial tubes. His body most likely was producing excess lymph fluids and a higher than normal concentration of fibrinogen which basically plasticized the blood into a cross between silly putty and oobleck (non Newtonian liquid). Since his lung was full of liquid (blood) when he coughed he generated enough force to launch that thing right out of him.

His worsening heart failure created increased pressure in the pulmonary vessels but the pump would actually decrease that effect by improving flow rates through the left ventricle.

It is amazing that the whole thing came out in one piece.
Click to expand...

I believe it was a gradual process that started after he was heparinized and started on the VAD.

Agree that it would need to be generally wet in the bronchials. We know he had severe left sided heart failure with an EF of 20%; over time that leads to right sided heart failure which would increase bronchial secretions in the airways.

There are proteins lining the bronchial airways that trigger clotting to occur once liquid blood enters the airway. However it's a gradual process which means that this man's coughing ability must have been limited somewhat initially because normally irritation of the airways from blood or blood clots would trigger enough force from coughing to prevent super large clots like this one from forming in the first place. Instead it would normally be much smaller clots.
 
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Hopkins Medicine said:
I believe it was a gradual process that started after he was heparinized and started on the VAD.

Agree that it would need to be generally wet in the bronchials. We know he had severe left sided heart failure with an EF of 20%; over time that leads to right sided heart failure which would increase bronchial secretions in the airways.

There are proteins lining the bronchial airways that trigger clotting to occur once liquid blood enters the airway. However it's a gradual process which means that this man's coughing ability must have been limited somewhat initially because normally irritation of the airways from blood or blood clots would trigger enough force from coughing to prevent super large clots like this one from forming in the first place. Instead it would normally be much smaller clots.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the explanation.

By gradual process, how long are you talking about? Hours... days?
 
Hopkins Medicine said:
I believe it was a gradual process that started after he was heparinized and started on the VAD.

Agree that it would need to be generally wet in the bronchials. We know he had severe left sided heart failure with an EF of 20%; over time that leads to right sided heart failure which would increase bronchial secretions in the airways.

There are proteins lining the bronchial airways that trigger clotting to occur once liquid blood enters the airway. However it's a gradual process which means that this man's coughing ability must have been limited somewhat initially because normally irritation of the airways from blood or blood clots would trigger enough force from coughing to prevent super large clots like this one from forming in the first place. Instead it would normally be much smaller clots.
Click to expand...
Beat me to it.
 
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KitingHigh said:
Thanks for the explanation.

By gradual process, how long are you talking about? Hours... days?
Click to expand...

I would guess several days at a minimum. The article states that after the VAD was placed and he was started on the heparin that he started developing "small volume" hemoptysis (coughing up blood) for a period of about a week before he finally coughed up the large clot.
 
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