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Coughing up blood is an alarming symptom , but it ’s not particularly uncommon . Even so , one man in California blow out of the water his doctor when he coughed up an unusual - looking line of descent coagulum : It was in the shape of his lung .
The 36 - yr - old human being was being treated for a serious sum status , according to a new reputation of the case , published Nov. 29 inThe New England Journal of Medicine . He had chronicheart loser , which means the heart muscular tissue ca n’t pump enough stock to encounter the physical structure ’s normal demands .
A man coughed up a large blood clot that was in the shape of his “bronchial tree,” or the lung’s branched airway passages.
His condition was so severe that doctors put him on a machine called a ventricular assist machine , which helps the gist pump blood . Because these machines can also increase the risk ofblood clots , he was prescribed a blood - thinner medicinal drug .
However , these medicine also increase the risk of exposure of bleeding , including cough up line of descent . Indeed , the patient had several cough installment in which he expelled little amount of money of blood , according to the report . But then , during an " utmost bout of coughing , " the patient spit out an " intact cast " of the right bronchial Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree . In other words , it was a moulding ( cast ) made of clotted blood in the shape of thelung ’s branched air passage passagesknown as bronchi .
" We were astonished , " Dr. Georg Wieselthaler , a heart and lung surgeon at the University of California , San Francisco ( UCSF ) , who treat the patient role , told The Atlantic . " It ’s a curiosity you ca n’t imagine — I mean , this is very , very , very uncommon . "
A man coughed up a large blood clot that was in the shape of his “bronchial tree,” or the lung’s branched airway passages.
It ’s less rare for patients to cough up bronchial " mould " made of other substance , such aslymphor mucus . But blood line is less sticky and sturdy than these other substances , meaning that a cast made of blood line is less probable to defend together when cough up , The Atlantic report .
Wieselthaler told The Atlantic that in this case , the patient had an contagion that increase levels of a protein called factor I , which helps blood clot form ; and higher levels of factor I could have helped the man ’s large coagulum to delay intact when it was cough up .
Even though the man had no further episodes of cough up pedigree , he unfortunately died a workweek later from complications of heart loser .
Wieselthaler ’s colleague , Dr. Gavitt Woodard , a clinical lad at UCSF , told The Atlantic that one reason they decide to publish the image was to show the " beautiful anatomy of the human body . "
in the beginning published onLive Science .
