Man coughs up giant lung-shaped blood clot
Although a man in California didn't cough up his lung, he came close. When the 36-year-old patient coughed out a massive blood clot in the shape of his lung, his doctors were taken aback. What are the chances of this happening? The man was receiving treatment for a significant heart ailment that necessitated the use of blood thinners. However, this drug raised his chances of bleeding. The patient discharged a "intact cast" of the right bronchial tree during a "extreme attack of coughing." In other words, it was a clotted blood mould (cast) in the shape of the bronchi, the lung's branched airway channels. According to his doctors, this form of "cast" composed of blood is quite uncommon. The man's health was so bad that he died from complications a week later. His physicians chose to make the image public in order to demonstrate the "beautiful anatomy of the human body." A report of the case was published Nov. 29 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
