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In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

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Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#191

Post by buck4roo »

iso1210 wrote: post #96
marcodiego wrote: post #14

I've had an spontaneous pneumothorax when I was a teenager. Had to undergo emergency surgery with only local anesthesia. The surgeon while cutting my chest asked: "You're sure it is this side, right?", which I confirmed. He then said: "Ok, if you're wrong I'm not going to jail alone."

I did some hostile environment training a while back, one of the medical courses was about "sucking chest wounds", where someone gets shot (or stabbed), and the action of breathing fills the chest cavity and thus means the lung can't work. It's been a long time since I did the course as I went a few years without having to travel to the kinds of places where it's likely I'd need to apply it, but I do remember a plast…

The Bolin Chest Seal is a sterile occlusive chest wound dressing for treating open pneumothorax and preventing tension pneumothorax...

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#192

Post by YeBanKo »

Animats wrote: post #176

Lufthansa takes this seriously. They encourage doctors to sign up for an incentive program, and about 10,000 doctors who fly Lufthansa have signed up.[1] They carry an emergency kit for use by a doctor on board, one that goes much further than a first aid kit. The airline covers medical liability. [1] https://www.lufthansa.com/us/en/doctor-on-board

This actually makes me want to choose them over other airlines. Seems like hidden a benefit, but important benefit.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#193

Post by YeBanKo »

sgjohnson wrote: post #132
FabHK wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wager to say that to most people in the developed world such thoughts would not occur, and almost certainly not to Brits (that are used to the NHS).

The NHS is garbage. After experiencing them once I took on a private health insurance that cost me £300ish per month. So now my taxes paid for the garbage public healthcare system that I didn’t want, and then I had to pay for the private insurance. Unfortunately most people aren’t that fortunate to be able to easily justify spending extra £300 a month on health insurance so they just cope with the NHS.

Have you ever had to navigate the US health care system?

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#195

Post by neycoda »

yowlingcat wrote: post #171
kmano8 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened to me in college. Driving home from the movies, chest started to hurt on inhale .. I decided to "sleep it off", which obviously didn't work. Went to the ER in the morning. Got the chest tube and spent about a week seeing if it would heal naturally, then they removed the offending part of my lung, and did a mechanical pleurodesis (a procedure that sticks your lung to the chest wall so it can't collapse).…

Goodness, is this more common than it seems? Happened to me in my mid twenties, same build. I remember talking to the doc (thank goodness it went away with oxygen for a few days) who said "Yup, this stuff just happens to otherwise healthy males your age. No one's really sure why." Was a little unsettling.

I wonder if environmental pollutants have anything to do with it.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#196

Post by archon810 »

YeBanKo wrote: post #192
Animats wrote: post #176

Lufthansa takes this seriously. They encourage doctors to sign up for an incentive program, and about 10,000 doctors who fly Lufthansa have signed up.[1] They carry an emergency kit for use by a doctor on board, one that goes much further than a first aid kit. The airline covers medical liability. [1] https://www.lufthansa.com/us/en/doctor-on-board

This actually makes me want to choose them over other airlines. Seems like hidden a benefit, but important benefit.

Lord help you if you ever have to argue with Lufthansa about a flight credit or get customer service of any kind. Worst airline I've ever had to deal with.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#197

Post by mcv »

ls612 wrote: post #169
cjrp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one upside from COVID; no flight will be short of hand gel to sanitise with! Actually, is hand gel even good for that?

It's literally designed to kill bacteria. Funnily enough it does next to nothing against respiratory pathogens like covid which spread through the air not through surfaces.

One of the first things reported about the virus was that it was held together by a membrane of fatty molecules that would easily dissolve with soap. Soap literally kills the virus. So of course everybody decides to wash their hands with alcohol-based sanitiser instead.

I've never quite understood that. But there has been a lot I don't understand these past few years.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#198

Post by WalterGR »

marcodiego wrote: post #39
WalterGR wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one do that after having a hole cut in one’s chest? Pain-wise.

The hole had lidocaine, a relatively good topic anesthetic. If don't move too much, the tube inside the chest doesn't causes too much pain. Actually, once the tube is inserted the feeling of relief and been able to breath normally is quite good. Disclaimer: I've had 3 spontaneous pneumathoraces.

lidocaine, a relatively good topic anesthetic.

Sure… But a hole in one’s chest isn’t exactly topical, right?

But what do I know? Can lidocaine be injected… sub… topically?

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#199

Post by brnt »

worewood wrote: post #46
brnt wrote: post #41

There's hacking and there is _hacking_. My sister is training to be a doctor and she has come to dislike the heavily regulated environment we have here in which doctors are not allowed to do anything of this sort. Now, they also don't usually need to, which is a good think, but after she returned from a year in South America, she misses the on-your-feet thinking, creativity and flexibility she could and had to employ…

Yeah, but as a South American, one thing is being able to be creative, another is _needing_ to be creative, which means doctors are not being given the resources they need (which is common here).

Of course, it's preferable to not require such creativity from doctors. But some people do well in adverse circumstances, and it takes an adverse circumstance to find out, I guess. For patients sake, I'm glad some people can focus on the outcome and not on executing protocols they learned in school.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#200

Post by LorenPechtel »

mikeryan wrote: post #172
marcodiego wrote: post #14

I've had an spontaneous pneumothorax when I was a teenager. Had to undergo emergency surgery with only local anesthesia. The surgeon while cutting my chest asked: "You're sure it is this side, right?", which I confirmed. He then said: "Ok, if you're wrong I'm not going to jail alone."

About three years ago I got in a mountain bike crash and broke my collar bone and three ribs, managed to ride off the mountain (for any locals it was the Mailboxes trail in Santa Cruz) drove home to the East Bay and walked into the ER. They did the first round of X-rays and were about to let me go since there's not much they do with ribs and collar bones these days. The last minute the Doc came back in and told me th…

I used to know someone that only went to the doc a few days after the traffic accident. Incomplete neck fracture, hanging by a thread. One wrong move and she would have dropped dead on the spot.
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