Doctors Are Stunned By This Fully Intact Blood Clot A Man Coughed Up
"I mean, this is very, very, very rare.”
The New England Journal of Medicine frequently publishes a series of astounding medical anomalies, and hoo boy, this latest one is a doozy. And warning, it’s pretty graphic.
Formed in the lower lung of a 36-year-old man who presented to hospital with severe complications from his pre-existing chronic heart failure condition, the 15cm long blood clot was coughed up fully intact and still in the form of the lung’s bronchial tree.
Obviously the network of bronchial tubes is usually for air, not blood, but the clot formed after a combination of blood thinners and an inserted heart pump caused a break in the pulmonary network allowing blood to enter the lungs.
While the clot in question isn’t that bizarre, the fact that the unnamed man somehow coughed it up fully intact floored his doctors. Speaking to The Atlantic, Dr. Georg Wieselthaler says he and the rest of his San Francisco University surgery team “were astonished. It’s a curiosity you can’t imagine — I mean, this is very, very, very rare.”
For any big lung fans out there, the journal includes the following, which describes exactly what we’re looking at here and really rams home how detailed the clot structure is:
“The right bronchial tree consists of three segmental branches in the upper lobe (blue arrows), two segmental branches in the middle lobe (white arrows), and five segmental branches in the lower lobe (black arrows)”
While the image is being shared a lot mostly for its bewildering grossness, it’s legitimately fascinating to see such a depiction of the inside of human lungs outside of a textbook. Sadly though, the patient passed away a week after the blood clot incident due to the many complications of his severe heart condition.
If medical anomalies are your jam, head over the the full list of photos on the journal’s website here. There’s some equally extraordinary pictures such as a man crying blood and an alopecia patient who’s hair loss formed a perfect spiral. Obviously though, it’s not for the faint-hearted.
Feature image via Georg M. Wieselthaler, M.D. / The New England Journal Of Medicine