An strange case study is inThe New England Journal of Medicine(warning , graphic images of surgery in that link ) describes a 56 - yr - sometime man who had had an extremely rare knottiness from surgery on his spinal electric cord that led to one of his arteries becoming blocked with cementum . Fortunately , he reclaim all flop .
The patient role had a vertebral densification faulting in his lower back . The man ’s L5 vertebra , located just above the sacrum , was the subject of a subroutine calledkyphoplasty . To animate a broken vertebra , a special type of cementum – polymethylmethacrylate medical cement – is injected into the bone . This provide the vertebra to return to its original height and excuse the patient role of pain .
Any aesculapian intervention has its risks – although not vulgar , one risk affiliate with this and exchangeable procedures is the cementum leaking into surrounding tissue . This is what happened to this special patient .
About five day after the spinal procedure , the human beings began have bureau nuisance , radiating to the jaw and shoulder on the right side of his soundbox . After two sidereal day of pain , he return to the hospital where he was give an ex - ray and a computed tomography ( CT ) CAT scan of his chest . The foreign torso in an artery was then find out .
The patient was immediately study to operation and underwent an emergency cardiothoracic procedure . That ’s when the surgeons were able to value the extent of the damage . The aesculapian cement had accumulated and solidified into an embolism 10.1 centimeters ( 4 in ) in distance and 2 millimeters in diameter . However , that was n’t the full extent of the damage .
The extraneous body ended up perforating the right atrium , the first chamber where venous blood come from the rest of the body gets into the warmheartedness , before moving to the right ventricle and being sent to the lungs to get free of carbon dioxide and get oxygen . The embolism did not discontinue there , pushing past the pericardium – the sack that surrounds the heart – and puncturing his correct lung .
Luckily , the surgery was a success . The cement embolus was dispatch and the damage to the heart was repaired . The patient did not support from any post - functional complication and a month since the subroutine has almost completely recovered .
