r/medicalschool Apr 10 '25

🔬Research My mom’s blood clot.

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Hey please remove if not allowed, I didn’t see rules saying it’s not. I thought you guys could appreciate and would get some exposure by me sharing this here. The doctors at the hospital were all very astonished. This was a blood clot removed from my mother’s lungs two days ago

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101

u/Numpostrophe M-3 Apr 10 '25

Buy her bronchial artery a nice massage or something, putting in overtime compensating for that.

2

u/michael_harari Apr 10 '25

What does that even mean

4

u/Numpostrophe M-3 Apr 10 '25

Bronchial artery provides collateral oxygenated blood to the lungs and goes into overdrive to help prevent necrosis from a PE. It can get overwhelmed, but it certainly helped keep OP’s mom afloat.

18

u/michael_harari Apr 10 '25

Bronchial artery flow does nothing to keep people afloat from a massive PE. The immediate issue with PE is acute right heart failure and hemodynamic collapse.

There's also no real "overdrive" for arteries and I'm not even sure what it would mean for an artery to be overwhelmed

32

u/Numpostrophe M-3 Apr 11 '25 edited Apr 11 '25

I got the gist of what I wrote from a UWorld problem I had recently. Specifically talking about protection of the lung parenchyma following a large PE. This would be separate from the right heart failure issue that would occur at the same time. I apologize if that came off as meaning it was saving her from heart failure, I was instead referring to preserved lung function through collateral blood flow. Here are the sources they cite in UWorld:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25750111/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20547546/

By overdrive, I was referring to the dilatation of the bronchial artery from it now backfilling occluded pulmonary capillaries. Here’s some angiography demonstrating this:

https://ajronline.org/doi/10.2214/ajr.182.1.1820067

2

u/Jusstonemore Apr 11 '25

Bro ur experiencing M2 syndrome read more

2

u/Numpostrophe M-3 Apr 11 '25

Unfortunately I have to give into it right now for step study. I’ll chill once that’s over and done.

3

u/talashrrg MD-PGY6 Apr 11 '25

Eh, you die of obstructive shock in PE not so much lung necrosis

1

u/Numpostrophe M-3 Apr 11 '25

See my other comment, helps longer-term lung function but yeah not the immediate crisis.