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Anal oxygen administration may save lives

economist.com

151–160 of 169 posts

Re: Anal oxygen administration may save lives

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clearly if anal oxygen proves to be safer and as effective then it will be adopted. No one is disputing that. Could've fooled me with how dismissive you were. > My point was that every decision in medicine s based on risk and benefit. Then there should be no problem with highlighting the risks so people realise that alternatives are worth it not just as somehow inferior "second standard" as implied by the person I…

To clarify for you (again), my comment was regarding your unfounded derision of existing, proven, lifesaving technologies—I was not dismissing of the technique proposed in the article. I don't think _"F### ventilators. They damage the patient's lungs, and laying tubes into the trachea requires traumatic surgery and carries significant secondary infection risk"_ is really offering an informed or balanced discussion of…

If someone gets their health advice off Hackernews comments I'd say they need a psychiatrist first.

Yes, they're the least bad treatment options we have right now, I can still be hyped about potential improvements.

> You can be sure that the nuanced and balanced discussion is a little more informative than "F### ventilators".

I'd rather hope so. I've had to ask "so what health risks were you supposed to inform me about according to the form you want me to sign?" way too many times.

Re: Anal oxygen administration may save lives

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it was "The Abyss", see the rat scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6hw4dGhm8Y From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abyss "The breathing fluid used in the film actually exists but has only been thoroughly investigated in animals.[5] Over the previous 20 years it had been tested on several animals, who survived. The rat shown in the film was actually breathing fluid and survived unharmed" https://en.wikipedi…

I could see a low pressure breathing fluid being advantageous for space travel. I wonder how long a mammal could live in that environment. Now if we can just retain our gills.

Retain?

Re: Anal oxygen administration may save lives

#153

The thing that surprised me most with this was the injectable perfluorocarbon emulsion . And it’s apparently even standard practice . Oxidation damage is actually the bigger risk. And here I was, fearing pizza trays and non-stick pans.

Can you explain to me why you fear injectable perfluorocarbon emulsion?

I think they are referring to PFASs [0] which have been a popular topic on HN for a while now. I’m not sure if the so-called perfluorocarbon emulsions in the original article would be classified as PFASs and/or carry the same risks, though.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...

Re: Anal oxygen administration may save lives

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't we do that now instead of ventilating?

ECMO was used for some Covid patients, but the machines are even more rare and the process even more tricky than ventilation.

External blood pumps (which ECMO uses) have issues with both clotting and mechanical damage to the red blood cells, both of which have to be actively managed.

Re: Anal oxygen administration may save lives

#155

First thing I needed to check that I have not woke up in alternate reality and that today is not 1 April, after I remembered that some drug addicts use similar techniques to get high.

Sir, I object. Not everyone who puts drugs in their butt is an addict. Some of us can plug a pill at a full-moon party every so often and go about the rest of our lives as usual thank-you-very-much.

That was not clear enough on my side, let me find source:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/thai-die/

So, some type of ultra cheap method to get high (but quite dangerous) is to get pump air with bicycle pump into the bottom. Article above.

Re: Anal oxygen administration may save lives

#156
post #3

The idiom ‘Blow Smoke Up Your Ass’ comes from tobacco enema. It seems that they almost got it right. Instead of smoke, oxygen should be used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema >A tobacco smoke enema, an insufflation of tobacco smoke into the rectum, i.e. as an enema, was employed by the indigenous peoples of North America to stimulate respiration, injecting the smoke with a rectal tube.[1][2] >Later,…

i thought so too but snopes says no

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tobacco-enema-blow-smoke/

Re: Anal oxygen administration may save lives

#157
post #32

Jokes aside, when would this be useful? I can't think of many situations where a patient wouldn't be able to breathe but was still alive. Some burn victims I guess?

Maybe some kind of worldwide pandemic of a respiratory infection with a significant fatality rate?

Ahh ... OK, I wasn't thinking clearly. I forgot about the lack of ventilators and was only thinking of the lack of oxygen recently reported in the news.

Re: Anal oxygen administration may save lives

#158

> "...They settled on liquid perfluorocarbons, which can absorb large amounts of oxygen and are often used as a blood substitute or to assist the ventilation of premature babies...." Reminded me of the scene from an old underwater sci-fi flic (? was it 'The Abyss' https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0096754/ ), where the deep-divers had to learn how to 'breathe' the oxygenated liquid instead of air. Speaking of liquid, there…

The idea of breathing one of these heavily oxygenated liquids has been around for a while and I believe even tested on live animals. I can’t remember if it was tested on humans. In theory it all works and has great benefits for breathing in high pressure environments. In reality I believe the issues encountered were: getting past the feeling of drowning at the beginning, needing very strong lungs for even normal brea…

Liquid breathing has never been successfully tested in humans, or any large animal. It doesn't scale up well from small animals. The work of breathing is too high. It might be feasible at some point with external mechanical ventilation.

Re: Anal oxygen administration may save lives

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is as clear fit as you are implying: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/brett-kavanaugh-meanin...

In the context of the words written in his yearbook, "Judge, have you boofed yet?", how could it possibly make sense to ask a 16-year-old boy if he has ever farted yet? Why even ask that question? What do you guess the answer is? Interpreting "boof" as fart in that context makes absolutely no sense. But interpreting "boof" as ingesting drugs or alcohol though the anus is perfectly consistent with his well documented…

Having once been a 16 year old boy, it's not unusual for teenagers to say catchphrases that are nonsensical and/or inside jokes.
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