Monday, August 23, 2010

Chew Your Food!

An 11 year old boy came in by EMS choking on his chicken fried steak. He took a huge bite and didn't quite chew enough. Bystanders and EMS failed with the Heimlich maneuver. When he arrived to the ER he was blue and about to pass out. Somehow transferring him from the the EMS stretcher to our stretcher while performing the Heimlich maneuver dislodged the meat. Here is the pic of the monster meal.




His oxygen saturation never rose about 86% on room air after the event, so he had to be transferred to a children's hospital for monitoring, bronchoscopy, and further workup. My suspicion is that he aspirated part of the meat.

-ER Doc

7 comments:

WhiteCoat said...

You sure that isn't a tonsil?
That looks more like human tissue than a piece of chicken.
Now if I only had a glass of Chianti.

ERP said...

I think that looks like a piece of myometrium.

SerenityNowHospital said...

Yeah I examined it pretty well. It's just mixed with a lot of blood/vomit.

StorytellERdoc said...

Ugh, man. I going to put my money in the "it's his liver" basket. One of my partners actually drive-heaved the other day while trying to clear a smelly food bolus from a patient's airway during intubation.

Feeling nauseous now...LOL

arzt4empfaenger said...

That looks like a part of the thyroid, or chewed liver. :-( Fried chicken? I'd never have guessed!

arzt4empfaenger said...

Also, why did I have to be eating grilled chicken right now? Man, good that it doesn't look alike. :x

cyrell said...

People nowadays seem to never have learned how to properly chew food and that they can savour it better that way.

No wonder with soft bread and other food that will be digested even if not properly chewed.

But unfortunately sometimes there is food that will get uncomfortable or even dangerous if people act as if they were ducks.

The meat they choke on or maybe pumpkin and sunflower seeds which will act like sharp little knives.

You are supposed to chew them into a pulp, not swallow most of them bitten in half or whole and then you wonder why you have a big fat obstruction with poky sharp things in it that make your intestinal wands bleed when you try to get it out.

Chew your food to savour it, it will last you longer and prevent unfortunate incidents