Man coughed up giant lung shaped blood clot!
A man in California didn't literally cough up his lung, but he came pretty close. The 36-year-old patient shocked his doctors when he coughed up a giant blood clot in the shape of his lung. How could this happen? The man was being treated for a serious heart condition that required him to take a blood-thinning medication. But this medication also increased his risk of bleeding. During an "extreme bout of coughing," the patient expelled an "intact cast" of the right bronchial tree. In other words, it was a mold (cast) made of clotted blood in the shape of the lung's branched airway passages known as bronchi. It's very rare to see this type of "cast" made of blood, his doctors said. The man's condition was so severe, he died a week later due to complications. His doctors decided to publish the image to show the "beautiful anatomy of the human body." Originally published in Live Science