Cadaver ???

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sweetymed88

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DOES NE 1 HAVE any good cadaver stories?;)

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I work weekend nights on a general med floor of the local hospital. About three weeks prior, we had gotten a patient who never should have been let out of the step down unit, or even the cc unit. Surgeons had removed nodules from this 80something year old's lungs. He could barely hold 88% oxygenation on 15L NRB and 6L nasal cannula. His heart was in a-fib in the 100s to 140s. This was his baseline. Had been for weeks. BUT HE WAS A FULL CODE. Finally, after weeks of getting attached to the guy, he coded on us. We got him back to the point he told his sons he didn't want to live like that, and he was extubated that night.
I was so shaken by the experience (I'd worked a number of codes before, but I didn't know them as persons as well as I knew and liked this guy), it stuck with me for weeks.
But the worse part was that week during my A&P lab (looking at cadavers the med students have already dissected), I could have sworn I saw my patient! Then I looked a little bit harder and realized that the cadaver was female!:oops:

don't get attached to your patients ;)
 
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He could barely hold 88% oxygenation on 15L NRB and 6L nasal cannula.

Not to be a dick about how your hospital handles stuff, but what the hell? That would be an indication to put him on CPAP or better yet BiPAP...... *shakes head*
 
That's how he coded...they had put him on a bipap, decided he needed to go back down the progressive care unit. Well on transfer they took of the bipap, and only put the pt on 15L NRB. It happened right at shift change, and I still don't trust the RT who was handling it.
BUt yeah, from other RT's I know they all say the same thing. The hospital's policy with the stuff is bad, especially vent. weening.
But then the MD had talked with the pt's sons repeatedly about a DNR, and they insisted on their father being a full code. The MD for the patient is one of our best intesivists, so witholding the bipap just might have been a necessary evil.:(
 
I got thrown up on by a cadaver once. Grossest thing thats ever happend to me, somone else put too much pressure on stomach while transfer the patient to the morgue cart, i was moving the upper half....

ugh...

But hey, that counts as clinical experience right?
 
That's how he coded...they had put him on a bipap, decided he needed to go back down the progressive care unit. Well on transfer they took of the bipap, and only put the pt on 15L NRB. It happened right at shift change, and I still don't trust the RT who was handling it.
BUt yeah, from other RT's I know they all say the same thing. The hospital's policy with the stuff is bad, especially vent. weening.
But then the MD had talked with the pt's sons repeatedly about a DNR, and they insisted on their father being a full code. The MD for the patient is one of our best intesivists, so witholding the bipap just might have been a necessary evil.:(
Point taken.....I've only seen one hospital that does the NRB+NC thing and I think that's a sign of an RT department with serious issues.

Where are you at out of curiosity?
 
I work weekend nights on a general med floor of the local hospital. About three weeks prior, we had gotten a patient who never should have been let out of the step down unit, or even the cc unit. Surgeons had removed nodules from this 80something year old's lungs. He could barely hold 88% oxygenation on 15L NRB and 6L nasal cannula. His heart was in a-fib in the 100s to 140s. This was his baseline. Had been for weeks. BUT HE WAS A FULL CODE. Finally, after weeks of getting attached to the guy, he coded on us. We got him back to the point he told his sons he didn't want to live like that, and he was extubated that night.
I was so shaken by the experience (I'd worked a number of codes before, but I didn't know them as persons as well as I knew and liked this guy), it stuck with me for weeks.
But the worse part was that week during my A&P lab (looking at cadavers the med students have already dissected), I could have sworn I saw my patient! Then I looked a little bit harder and realized that the cadaver was female!:oops:

don't get attached to your patients ;)


I didn't understand any of what you said, but I guess all of this jargon will make perfect sense when I am a med student (hopefully):p :(
 
I didn't understand any of what you said, but I guess all of this jargon will make perfect sense when I am a med student (hopefully):p :(
CC Unit- Critical care or coronary care unit
NRB- non-rebreather mask; a type of oxygen mask that delivers between 60-90% oxygen depending upon the flow rate and how much of a leak there is around the mask
A-fib: atrial fibrillation, a type of abnormal heart rhythm where the atria (the top two chambers) don't contract effectively and just quiver. It is often associated with episodes of abnormally fast heart rate- this is one of the things people refer to as "palpitations"
"Full code"- basically if his heart stops, he gets the fully medical Monty (CPR, defibrillation, a breathing tube, medications, etc).
CPAP- continuous positive airway pressure, a type of mechanical ventilation that can be delivered noninvasively by properly fitted face or nasal mask. Basically it helps ease the work of breathing and improve oxygenation in patients such as the one described.
BiPAP- bilevel positive airway pressure....another type of mechanical ventilation that can be delivered in the same manner as CPAP and serves much the same purpose but it has several benefits over CPAP in most cases.

Any other questions?
 
In my summer job i worked with my dad in a warehouse. There was a guy there who was a lumper (paid by truckers to restack stuff to fit our racks). He looked like the marshmellow villain at the end of ghostbusters. Just a big fat alcoholic, just your run of the mill low-life. nice guy though. anyway, he disappreared for a few months. The first few weeks no one worried because he regualry disappreared on binges for days. after a few months no one could find him. they checked his usually hangouts: county jail, half-way houses, extended family. Didn't appear anywhere. Another problem was his business partner (if being a lumper is business) and no one else knew his real name, he went by a word that meant fat guy, that i'm not gonna mention. I only knew he real first name because he told me the first time i met him, but his name isn't exactly rare. So may dad told me when i left for school as a joke to keep an eye out for him in the cadaver lab, and have pity on whoever gets him cuz they may need a few extra buckets. cruel i know, but if you had meant this guy, he'd say the same thing.

A couple weeks into school my dad sends a text message to me while im in lab that said, call off the search, we found him. Apparently he was drying out somewhere in northern wisconsin, like 7 hours away. the text gave me a laugh.


I guess you had to be there.
 
In my summer job i worked with my dad in a warehouse. There was a guy there who was a lumper (paid by truckers to restack stuff to fit our racks). He looked like the marshmellow villain at the end of ghostbusters. Just a big fat alcoholic, just your run of the mill low-life. nice guy though. anyway, he disappreared for a few months. The first few weeks no one worried because he regualry disappreared on binges for days. after a few months no one could find him. they checked his usually hangouts: county jail, half-way houses, extended family. Didn't appear anywhere. Another problem was his business partner (if being a lumper is business) and no one else knew his real name, he went by a word that meant fat guy, that i'm not gonna mention. I only knew he real first name because he told me the first time i met him, but his name isn't exactly rare. So may dad told me when i left for school as a joke to keep an eye out for him in the cadaver lab, and have pity on whoever gets him cuz they may need a few extra buckets. cruel i know, but if you had meant this guy, he'd say the same thing.

A couple weeks into school my dad sends a text message to me while im in lab that said, call off the search, we found him. Apparently he was drying out somewhere in northern wisconsin, like 7 hours away. the text gave me a laugh.


I guess you had to be there.
:laugh:
 
*My friend dragged me over to her cadaver and told me to grab the penis. I was of course like....why? but she said it was very interesting what would happen. So, I did and then she grabbed the testes and started squeezing them. With each squeeze, the penis got more hard and erect. Turns out he had a penis pump and I was holding the boner of a dead guy.

*The oldest physician/professor of anatomy was demonstrating the various landmarks of the anus by inserting his finger. WITHOUT gloves. "At the knuckle, you're at the dentate line." Later he was looking through the Netter atlas and licking his finger to turn the pages. Gross.

Interesting Finds--
*Our cadaver had a basketball sized tumor that took up where his right lung should be. He died of ARDS (Acute Resp Distress Syndrome). No ****.
*The cadaver next to us died of ephedrine addiction. There was absolutely no body fat. NONE.
*One cadaver had a small metal rod inserted in his arm with language on it we didn't recognize. There was no scar above it at all. Proof of alien probes?
*Sad fact- most of our cadavers came from nursing homes and had their main cause of death listed as "failure to thrive."
 
One cadaver had a small metal rod inserted in his arm with language on it we didn't recognize. There was no scar above it at all. Proof of alien probes?

It was probably distally inserted from one of the ends. This is very common in femur fractures (intramedullary nailing)

Our cadaver had a basketball sized tumor that took up where his right lung should be. He died of ARDS (Acute Resp Distress Syndrome). No ****.
Why "no ****"? You make it sound like this is uncommon. Just out of curiosity was it a meso?

"failure to thrive."
Ah, the catch all nursing diagnosis. :laugh: It's not sad in the sense you seem to be implying......it doesn't mean that they were not receiving adequate care.....it just happens sometimes, particularly in patients with cancer or multiple chronic illnesses.
 
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In my summer job i worked with my dad in a warehouse. There was a guy there who was a lumper (paid by truckers to restack stuff to fit our racks). He looked like the marshmellow villain at the end of ghostbusters. Just a big fat alcoholic, just your run of the mill low-life. nice guy though. anyway, he disappreared for a few months. The first few weeks no one worried because he regualry disappreared on binges for days. after a few months no one could find him. they checked his usually hangouts: county jail, half-way houses, extended family. Didn't appear anywhere. Another problem was his business partner (if being a lumper is business) and no one else knew his real name, he went by a word that meant fat guy, that i'm not gonna mention. I only knew he real first name because he told me the first time i met him, but his name isn't exactly rare. So may dad told me when i left for school as a joke to keep an eye out for him in the cadaver lab, and have pity on whoever gets him cuz they may need a few extra buckets. cruel i know, but if you had meant this guy, he'd say the same thing.

A couple weeks into school my dad sends a text message to me while im in lab that said, call off the search, we found him. Apparently he was drying out somewhere in northern wisconsin, like 7 hours away. the text gave me a laugh.


I guess you had to be there.


I was so prepared for this story to end in you dealing with his cadaver.
 
I didn't understand any of what you said, but I guess all of this jargon will make perfect sense when I am a med student (hopefully):p :(

join the club. I'm almost forced to feel inadequate as a pre-med.

My cousin told me that when she was in nursing school, the first years had to do a dare (this is in India where things like this are allowed) and one of her classmates was dared to put a piece of chalk in the mouth of each cadaver in the anatomy lab in the middle of the night. The girl bravely accepted it and proceeded to do so. However, as she reached the last cadaver and was about to stick a chalk in its mouth, the cadaver sprang into life. The girl freaked out so badly that she ran out of the room screaming like a mad woman. Turns out, the last body was just one of the seniors pulling a prank. According to my cousin, that girl never returned to school.

Sad, but true.
 
*The cadaver next to us died of ephedrine addiction. There was absolutely no body fat. NONE.

That's amazing. I'm a little jealous - even though the body fat helps keep the cadaver from drying out, it's kind of gross.

Our cadaver was obese, and when we were removing the skin from the leg, we had this enormous pile of semi-liquid fat under each leg. Unfortunately, one of the legs fell out of the stirrup and landed (with a loud splat) on the pile, spraying everyone with a wave of fat and formaldehyde.

One of the cadavers had enormous AAA (abdominal aortic aneurysm.) It was about the size of the softball, and no one could believe it hadn't burst.

Another cadaver had a hemopericardium (blood that has escaped from the heart chambers and is filling the pericardial sac). The students didn't know that, and when they'd opened the pericardium and prodded the heart, the surface of the dried blood accumulation cracked. One of them shrieked, "We broke the heart! It cracked open!"

I know that a few years ago, one of the cadavers was a genuine hermaphrodite. Full male genitalia outside, but a complete uterus, Fallopian tubes, and ovaries inside.
 
I went on a tour of UT Houston.
The guide showed us a cadaver.
It was wierd because all the people that didn't want to see it, are applying for med school(and have a way better chance than I do). :confused:
 
*My friend dragged me over to her cadaver and told me to grab the penis. I was of course like....why? but she said it was very interesting what would happen. So, I did and then she grabbed the testes and started squeezing them. With each squeeze, the penis got more hard and erect. Turns out he had a penis pump and I was holding the boner of a dead guy.

*The oldest physician/professor of anatomy was demonstrating the various landmarks of the anus by inserting his finger. WITHOUT gloves. "At the knuckle, you're at the dentate line." Later he was looking through the Netter atlas and licking his finger to turn the pages. Gross.

This isn't a cadaver story, but my old bio teacher (really nice guy, but really odd) told us that he would cook us a meal during the last week of class.

Second to last day of the semester and he comes in with a grocery bag and a grill.

Just to freak us out, he said that he got the "freshest duck on the market" from the local supermarket and took out a dead duck carcass (he had obviously shot it....he showed us the hole where the bullet hit in the throat).

Anyway, you can't just cook a duck carcass so he got a pair of scissors and a scalpel and just started tearing this poor duck to shreds. He ripped a hole in the duck's abdomen and just started grabbing organs/organ systems with his bare hands, identifying the parts as he went. While pulling apart this duck, he would intermittently drink coffee so by the end of it, his styrofoam coffee cup was blood red.

He then took out the chicken breasts and put them on the grill.

Needless to say, no one wanted to eat the duck. In response, he called us a bunch of consumer pansies.
-Dr. P.
 
This isn't a cadaver story, but my old bio teacher (really nice guy, but really odd) told us that he would cook us a meal during the last week of class.

Second to last day of the semester and he comes in with a grocery bag and a grill.

Just to freak us out, he said that he got the "freshest duck on the market" from the local supermarket and took out a dead duck carcass (he had obviously shot it....he showed us the hole where the bullet hit in the throat).

Anyway, you can't just cook a duck carcass so he got a pair of scissors and a scalpel and just started tearing this poor duck to shreds. He ripped a hole in the duck's abdomen and just started grabbing organs/organ systems with his bare hands, identifying the parts as he went. While pulling apart this duck, he would intermittently drink coffee so by the end of it, his styrofoam coffee cup was blood red.

He then took out the chicken breasts and put them on the grill.

Needless to say, no one wanted to eat the duck. In response, he called us a bunch of consumer pansies.
-Dr. P.

I'm guessing this was before Avian Flu became popular subject matter for newspapers, school lectures, made for tv movies..
 
gross lab is kind of a trip sometimes. you get so used to ripping stuff apart that you don't really think about it and can kid around. then all of a sudden you realize you're sawing someones head off.

i think i've posted this story before, but whatever.

we cut the head off of our cadaver for head and neck. we were down with the body. all of the tissue from a particular (or at least as much of it as is reasonably possible) is stored in a specific polycart for creamation and return to the family.

by polycart i mean big plastic trashcan.

so here we are, trying to stuff a torso into a trash can and can't get the lid to shut. we're leaning on it and repositioning the torso but still no go. had to amputate above the knee to get the rest to fit.

it was like a scene from a mob movie. and in any other context, utterly absurd.

such is the anatomy lab. love it or hate it you won't forget it.
 
it was like a scene from a mob movie. and in any other context, utterly absurd.

:laugh: That's awesome. :laugh: Kind of reminds me of the crap I saw working at a funeral home.....speeding freigh train versus 17 y/o suicidal pedestrian. (Me to the guy assisting me: "Check in the bag and make sure we have everything")
 
I went on a tour of UT Houston.
The guide showed us a cadaver.
It was wierd because all the people that didn't want to see it, are applying for med school(and have a way better chance than I do). :confused:

When did you go on a tour? I just went on a tour there also and was squeamish about the cadaver and turned around so I didnt have to see it. But Eventually I turned back and looked at it. Maybe we were on the same tour?
 
dropkick murphy:

this will probably discredit me with the knowledge/scope of practice thing and make me sound real critical, but I'm just a nursing assistant. Albeit an extremely over educated nursing assistant, but just a nursing assistant.

I worked my way through undergrad, and figured that I could still learn more from being the hospital, asking questions, and pretty much just keeping my eyes and ears open (rather than using my BS in chem and being a lab rat).

I also have good friends at work who run the ICU on weekend nights. Not only are they great for questions, but on Monday morning (our friday night) we have a little place that will serve a third shifter's dream: breakfast with margaritas! That's where I've learned most of my 'medicine', from listening to them talk about codes, bad patients, harvists, etc.
 
dropkick murphy:

this will probably discredit me with the knowledge/scope of practice thing and make me sound real critical, but I'm just a nursing assistant. Albeit an extremely over educated nursing assistant, but just a nursing assistant.

I worked my way through undergrad, and figured that I could still learn more from being the hospital, asking questions, and pretty much just keeping my eyes and ears open (rather than using my BS in chem and being a lab rat).

I also have good friends at work who run the ICU on weekend nights. Not only are they great for questions, but on Monday morning (our friday night) we have a little place that will serve a third shifter's dream: breakfast with margaritas! That's where I've learned most of my 'medicine', from listening to them talk about codes, bad patients, harvists, etc.
Actually you haven't discredited yourself in my eyes.....be proud of the role you play. :thumbup:
 
One of the cadavers had enormous AAA (abdominal aortic aneurysm.) It was about the size of the softball, and no one could believe it hadn't burst.
Oh, I have that beat. One of the nearby cadavers in my lab had a AAA that was, I kid you not, about 2/3 the size of an NFL football. The heart was also about the same size with a few CABGs on it.
 
we cut the head off of our cadaver for head and neck. we were down with the body. all of the tissue from a particular (or at least as much of it as is reasonably possible) is stored in a specific polycart for creamation and return to the family.
ugh. bisecting the heads wasn't a big deal to me, but cutting the head off would have disturbed me significantly. transecting the penis gave me day-mares for a few days too. :p
 
Yea, why are you applying to become a doctor when you clearly act like you've already become a doctor. You think because you're an emt/paramedic you know everything. How about you criticize more people who are emts and say how poorly hospitals are run.

He is not a paramedic, he is an EMT-Intermediate. I don't want people getting the wrong ideas about paramedics.:rolleyes:

Oh, I have that beat. One of the nearby cadavers in my lab had a AAA that was, I kid you not, about 2/3 the size of an NFL football. The heart was also about the same size with a few CABGs on it.

This wasn't on a cadaver, but I transported a patient who told me he had an AAA the size of a pigeon. This struck me as funny because I pictured the guy's CT, and imagined his aorta taking the shape of a pigeon. It just seemed funny that he would choose a pigeon to describe the size of his AAA. I would have gone with softball or grapefruit, but maybe the guy just liked birds.
 
He is not a paramedic, he is an EMT-Intermediate. I don't want people getting the wrong ideas about paramedics

:laugh: Correct, I'm an EMT-I, not a medic at the moment. But I was speaking about BiPAP/CPAP and oxygen therapy as a respiratory therapist, not an EMS provider. But then again, Samara is obviously just trolling so I feel no further need to defend myself. Enjoy your banning. :thumbup:
 
One of my paramedic buddies started out as a EMT-B doing what they call 'rat patrol'. This is where you go to the nursing homes at night to pick-up the newly deceased.

It was his second or third night and the other medic was making the newbie sit in back with the corpse. He says that he was just sitting there feeling really uncomfortable when this corpse sat bolt upright in the box.

From the way he described it he busted through the back doors of the ambulance when it was going thirty miles an hour and hit the ground running for dear life.

The other medic had seen it through the rearview and almost wrecked, he was laughing so hard. Apparently, he got almost a mile away before his buddy got back to him and explained that it was just rigor setting in.

-Mike
 
One of my paramedic buddies started out as a EMT-B doing what they call 'rat patrol'. This is where you go to the nursing homes at night to pick-up the newly deceased.

It was his second or third night and the other medic was making the newbie sit in back with the corpse. He says that he was just sitting there feeling really uncomfortable when this corpse sat bolt upright in the box.

From the way he described it he busted through the back doors of the ambulance when it was going thirty miles an hour and hit the ground running for dear life.

The other medic had seen it through the rearview and almost wrecked, he was laughing so hard. Apparently, he got almost a mile away before his buddy got back to him and explained that it was just rigor setting in.

-Mike


:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Back when I worked part time at a funeral home, we put one of my coworkers in a cremation container (read as: cardboard box for bodies), and went through the drivethrough at McDonald's....I sat the food down on the floor between the seats and you see this hand reach out of the container (which had the funeral home's name on top of it).....The girl at the drivethrough fainted. :laugh: :laugh:
 
My two cents for MissMorgan:

1. This thread was supposed to be cadaver stories, and most people here would have had either clinical experience or A&P. Stuff like "a-fib" is covered in A&P, so you shouldn't be so critical of dropkick for knowing it just because you don't.

2. Clinical experience: Get some! :p
 
Oh, I have that beat. One of the nearby cadavers in my lab had a AAA that was, I kid you not, about 2/3 the size of an NFL football. The heart was also about the same size with a few CABGs on it.

Whoa! That's incredible. Would you even need an ultrasound to see that aneurysm jumping up through the abdominal wall? Absolutely crazy.
 
I was walking behind a man pushing a bed down these back super secret halls that most of the public will never see in a hospital. I noticed he was dressed nicely, but being a new volunteer at the time, I didn't put it together until we both got close to the ER. Then I figured it was probably a patient from ICU who had recently died. The nicely dressed man was the meat wagon.

Suddenly, my nasal passages alerted me to quite an offensive odor. It showed on my face, obviously, because as he turned the bed around to get it through a door (I held the door for him), he chuckled and said, "Cadaver farts."
 
It was probably distally inserted from one of the ends. This is very common in femur fractures (intramedullary nailing)

It was just below the skin of the arm lying parallel to the bone. The docs were stumped as well.

Why "no ****"? You make it sound like this is uncommon. Just out of curiosity was it a meso?

I didn't mean to make ARDS or cancer sound uncommon. I meant it like, duh, really? It might be hard to breath with the monster tumor on your lung? (insert sarcastic tone here) and I believe it was a Merkel cell tumor. He had them all over his body but that was by far the biggest.


Ah, the catch all nursing diagnosis. :laugh: It's not sad in the sense you seem to be implying......it doesn't mean that they were not receiving adequate care.....it just happens sometimes, particularly in patients with cancer or multiple chronic illnesses.

Ya, I can see that. It was just wierd though that it was the only cause listed, no other contributing factors like cancer, dementia, etc. Especially when there were other choices like Natural Causes.
 
ugh. bisecting the heads wasn't a big deal to me, but cutting the head off would have disturbed me significantly. transecting the penis gave me day-mares for a few days too. :p

The penis wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Maybe b/c I don't have one :laugh: BUT I absolutely hated bisecting the bowel. Our professor lectured us before about "the stinky ass fat" we'd be chunking through. Oh and it was stinky.

It also bothered me when we were done with arms, they told us to just got them off. I don't know. It just seemed excessively mutilating to the body since they weren't in the way. I know, I know. We cut them off eventually when we were down to just the head, but then it seemed necessary, I suppose. It was my first quarter, guess I was just a softie.
 
That's amazing. I'm a little jealous - even though the body fat helps keep the cadaver from drying out, it's kind of gross.

Our cadaver was obese, and when we were removing the skin from the leg, we had this enormous pile of semi-liquid fat under each leg. Unfortunately, one of the legs fell out of the stirrup and landed (with a loud splat) on the pile, spraying everyone with a wave of fat and formaldehyde.


Ya thats how our guy was too. We had sooo much fat to dig through all over, but he did have bid muscles too so that was helpful. I used to get jealous of the fat-less cadaver but then I saw how difficult it was to find good vessels and not cut the muscles. THey were right below the very thin skin. Also, the gut with no fat is really nasty. Its like a crumpled up wet towel. You can't identify a thing.
 
My cadaver's lens replacement flew out and hit me in the mouth when I cut open his eye.

The cadaver in the tank next to mine smelled like cheeseburger mac (my favorite of the Hamburger Helper offerings). Didn't stop me from eating cheeseburger mac, just gives me a constant reminder of anatomy lab when I do.
 
I didn't understand any of what you said, but I guess all of this jargon will make perfect sense when I am a med student (hopefully):p :(


Maybe you missed that part Samara, next time read before you jump all over Dropkick. I knew what most of he said myself, but not all of it. I found it extremely helpful.
 
Point taken.....I've only seen one hospital that does the NRB+NC thing and I think that's a sign of an RT department with serious issues.


What is the thinking of this? "Hmm...NRB gives ~ 90%. NC gives ~ 24-44%. :idea: So logically, NRB + NC would give him ~114-134% O2!!"

??
 
this thread went to ****


You didn't read my cadaver fart story, didn't you. You'd then realize there was no ****, just gas.
*crosses arms across chest and huffs*
 
It was just below the skin of the arm lying parallel to the bone. The docs were stumped as well.

That is bizarre.....

Ya, I can see that. It was just wierd though that it was the only cause listed, no other contributing factors like cancer, dementia, etc. Especially when there were other choices like Natural Causes.

One of the research projects I was involved with involved looking at death certificate data and the major problem we ran into is that most are filled out inaccurately (that is coming from the doctor I was working with, not my own opinion). Despite guidelines out there to improve things there seems to be little attention paid to this rather important part of public health data collection, so what you encountered doesn't surprise me.

I didn't mean to make ARDS or cancer sound uncommon. I meant it like, duh, really? It might be hard to breath with the monster tumor on your lung? (insert sarcastic tone here) and I believe it was a Merkel cell tumor. He had them all over his body but that was by far the biggest.

Ah....sorry for the misunderstanding. :laugh: We had a patient that had a mesothelioma that completely filled his right chest to the point where his heart had been pushed to the right. How he was still alive (and even at that, he was barely so) I'm not sure.....
 
What is the thinking of this? "Hmm...NRB gives ~ 90%. NC gives ~ 24-44%. :idea: So logically, NRB + NC would give him ~114-134% O2!!"

??
The bull**** answer I was given was "We do it in case the NRB becomes disconnected, so the patient doesn't suffocate". :eek: Now how scary is that? :laugh:
 
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