The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Green urine, a pin in the heart, death from licorice overdose and other strange medical cases

2021-01-01T21:55:35.090Z


A Michigan woman saw an organ from her body migrate inside her. A man in Colorado passed out from a cold allergy. They are some of the most unusual cases and can provide key answers.


From a man with green urine to a teenager with a sewing pin in his heart: although these are isolated situations, sometimes rare health cases such as these detected or reported by doctors in 2020 can help to

better understand some rare diseases

or

detect symptoms uncommon

in ailments that are. 

Live Science magazine made a compilation of the strangest cases of this year.

Green urine

An unidentified 62-year-old man from Chicago, Illinois, was hospitalized after it was discovered that he had high levels of carbon dioxide in his blood, which can be fatal.

Five days after he was put on a respirator, and after receiving a general pain reliever, his urine, collected in a catheter bag, turned green.

The reason your urine turned this color was due to the propofol you took.

Although it is a widely used pain reliever, it can sometimes cause this, as The New England Journal of Medicine explains.

But this discoloration is not harmful and disappears as soon as you stop taking the medicine.

As it happened to this man. 

[The first child dies from the syndrome linked to COVID-19 in New York.

There are another 90 patients in the US]

A pierced heart

A 17-year-old teenager, of unspecified provenance, had chest pain that led to him being admitted to an emergency room, according to a case report published in The Journal of Emergency Medicine.

The CT scan of his chest showed the cause: a "linear metallic foreign object" lodged in his heart, according to the report.

The strange object turned out to be a 3.5-centimeter sewing pin that doctors removed through open heart surgery.

The teenager first said that he had not ingested the object.

But she later revealed that she sometimes carried sewing pins to her mouth when she made her clothes.

Although he did not remember swallowing a pin.

Fortunately, he recovered after surgery and had no further complications.

[Alert near Houston for brain-eating amoeba: tap water should not be used for any reason]

Cold allergy

A 34-year-old Colorado patient collapsed after emerging from a hot shower and entering a cold bath.

The reason?

An allergy to cold, known as anaphylaxis, according to a report published in The Journal of Emergency Medicine. 

Doctors' final diagnosis: cold urticaria, an allergic skin reaction after being exposed to cold temperatures.

In more severe cases, people can develop anaphylaxis, which can cause their blood pressure to plummet and the airways to narrow, making it difficult to breathe.

After receiving an antihistamine and steroids, the man's condition improved.

Doctors warn about new syndrome linked to COVID-19 that affects children

May 5, 202001: 38

Licorice overdose

A 54-year-old man in Massachusetts who ate too much black licorice suddenly lost consciousness after experiencing a heart problem, according to a case report published in The New England Journal of Medicine in September this year. 

After being treated in the intensive care unit, the man died 32 hours after entering the hospital.

And is that licorice has a compound called glycyrrhizin that is toxic in large doses, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA, in English).

His family pointed out that the man had a poor diet and that, in recent weeks, he had gobbled one or two large packets of licorice every day.

Eating too much licorice can be dangerous, or licorice-root-flavored candy can be dangerous because glycyrrhine lowers the body's potassium levels, which in turn can lead to high blood pressure and abnormal heart rhythms.

According to the FDA, eating just 2 ounces of black licorice a day for two weeks can cause heart rhythm problems.

A bladder transformed into a brewery

The bladder of a 61-year-old woman underwent a strange change: it began to ferment sugar into alcohol, thus becoming a kind of brewery.

The patient required a liver transplant because she suffered from cirrhosis.

Her doctors were puzzled to discover that her urine tested positive for alcohol, even though she denied drinking, according to the report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Urinalysis in a scientific laboratory in London (file image).

AP

After investigating her case, the doctors discovered that the microbes in this woman's bladder fermented the glucose into alcohol.

The woman's condition is similar to a rare disorder called "auto-beer syndrome" (ABS), in which microbes in the gastrointestinal tract convert carbohydrates into alcohol.

People with ABS can get drunk just from eating carbohydrates, according to Live Science.

But the woman's case was different: the fermentation took place in her bladder and the alcohol did not pass into the bloodstream, so the woman did not appear to be intoxicated.

The woman's condition was so rare that she didn't even have a name yet.

Doctors proposed calling it "urinary auto-beer syndrome" or "bladder fermentation syndrome."

Wandering spleen

A Michigan woman suffered from a rare condition: she suffered from "wandering spleen," which occurs when the ligaments that hold the spleen (the largest lymphatic organ) in its usual place weaken and allow the organ to migrate within the body.

Coronavirus genetic mutation is evolving and this is why

Nov. 4, 202004: 03

CT scans of the woman's abdomen, taken just two days apart, showed that the spleen had traveled from the upper left of her abdomen to the lower right, according to a case report published in The New England Journal of Medicine. .

A distance of 0.3 meters, according to the authors.

The woman had a liver condition that resulted in her spleen enlarged, which in turn caused the surrounding ligaments to stretch.

With information from Live Science, The New England Journal of Medicine (also in this and this other case), Yahoo News, Annals of Internal Medicine, The Journal of Emergency Medicine, Healio.com, The New York Times

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-01-01

You may like

Life/Entertain 2024-03-06T10:15:31.755Z
Life/Entertain 2024-03-06T09:47:07.131Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.