Unbelievable Survivals: 70 Patients Defied All Odds Against Grim Medical Diagnoses
Recently coded a patient for 40+ minutes, everybody wanted to stop but he was young (50s), so I persisted. People don’t come back from codes that long. Then, all of a sudden he gets a pulse back.
So we think this is temporary, and wonder about anoxic brain injury. I leave service, come back days later and dab smack on day one discharge him home in stable condition. He had a full blown conversation and was so thankful, tearful and kept saying ” Thank you for not giving up on me” He had no deficits. Mind blown.
Had a guy come in with acute onset blindness in both eyes.
Did a blood gas which showed a pH of 6.6 and Bicarb of 0.5.
To give some perspective for non-medical peoples – these numbers shouldn’t be compatible with life. Normal blood pH is 7.35 to 7.45. And because pH is a logarithmic scale, this guys blood was almost 10 times as acidic as it should be. The fact that he had no bicarbonate (acid-base buffer in the blood) in his system reflects that he had exhausted his usual compensatory mechanisms.
We were convinced initially that it would turn about to be metahnol poisoning but all his toxicology turned out to be normal. He needed 10 days of dialysis in ICU, but eventually made a full recovery. We never were able to work out what caused his severe metabolic derangements.
Post Comment