Post by blackcrowheart on Jan 6, 2006 13:44:11 GMT -5
Shot in the Gut, and She Didn't Even Know It
By DENISE GRADY
Published: January 3, 2006
www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/science/03find.html?
adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1136470890-JK1px30PGXIi8Uq+k1yqug
Though it may look vaguely like a hand grenade, the solid white
structure in the X-ray is actually someone's appendix, visible only
because it is full of buckshot - so full, in fact, that it is
stretched to about three times its normal size.
A 73-year-old woman's appendix was full of buckshot, making it easily
visible in this X-ray. The small spot above and to the left is a
pellet on the way down.
The patient, a 73-year-old Inuit woman at Norton Sound Regional
Hospital in Nome, Alaska, had probably been swallowing the pellets
inadvertently for decades, in the meat of ducks and geese shot by
local hunters.
The image was no surprise to the doctors who interpreted her X-ray,
William M. Cox and Gene R. Pesola, who were used to seeing buckshot -
though not this much - in the appendix in Alaska natives.
The round spot high above and to the left of the appendix on the film
is another pellet on the way down, "probably evidence of a recent
meal," the doctors wrote, in a report posted online last week by The
New England Journal of Medicine.
Older people with bad or missing teeth may not chew well enough to
notice the metal pellets in their food, the doctors said.
Once swallowed, the shot may travel through the digestive tract and
leave by the usual exit. But some pellets may find their way into the
appendix.
"The buckshot goes down the narrow part of the appendix to the wider
part and ends up with nowhere to go since it is a blind pouch," Dr.
Pesola explained in an e-mail message, adding that the pellets become
trapped because the opening is narrow.
The buckshot was probably not causing symptoms, he said. DENISE GRADY
By DENISE GRADY
Published: January 3, 2006
www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/science/03find.html?
adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1136470890-JK1px30PGXIi8Uq+k1yqug
Though it may look vaguely like a hand grenade, the solid white
structure in the X-ray is actually someone's appendix, visible only
because it is full of buckshot - so full, in fact, that it is
stretched to about three times its normal size.
A 73-year-old woman's appendix was full of buckshot, making it easily
visible in this X-ray. The small spot above and to the left is a
pellet on the way down.
The patient, a 73-year-old Inuit woman at Norton Sound Regional
Hospital in Nome, Alaska, had probably been swallowing the pellets
inadvertently for decades, in the meat of ducks and geese shot by
local hunters.
The image was no surprise to the doctors who interpreted her X-ray,
William M. Cox and Gene R. Pesola, who were used to seeing buckshot -
though not this much - in the appendix in Alaska natives.
The round spot high above and to the left of the appendix on the film
is another pellet on the way down, "probably evidence of a recent
meal," the doctors wrote, in a report posted online last week by The
New England Journal of Medicine.
Older people with bad or missing teeth may not chew well enough to
notice the metal pellets in their food, the doctors said.
Once swallowed, the shot may travel through the digestive tract and
leave by the usual exit. But some pellets may find their way into the
appendix.
"The buckshot goes down the narrow part of the appendix to the wider
part and ends up with nowhere to go since it is a blind pouch," Dr.
Pesola explained in an e-mail message, adding that the pellets become
trapped because the opening is narrow.
The buckshot was probably not causing symptoms, he said. DENISE GRADY