- A 63-year-old man died on a Lufthansa flight on Thursday, according to Swiss-German outlet Blick.
- Witnesses told the outlet the man had blood gushing from his nose and mouth.
- The witnesses said passengers were screaming at the sight.
Any idea what kind of health complication causes blood to gush from your nose and mouth? Sounds insane to watch especially when you can’t leave the immediate area…
Critical care nurse here. The answer is esophageal varices.
It’s the same physiological anomaly as hemorrhoids, except in your esophagus. Swollen, fragile veins caused by increased internal pressure. In the case of hemorrhoids, that pressure inside the veins is caused by straining too much when trying to poo. In esophageal varices, the increased pressure inside the esophageal veins comes from blood backing up from a swollen, scarred, and damaged liver. So we often see esophageal varices in end stage alcohol use disorder.
Horror stories abound in emergency departments and ICUs of having to do CPR on a patient massively hemorrhaging out of their mouth from esophageal varices. As soon as nurses I know saw this report, our immediate thought was, “Yep, varices.”
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15429-esophageal-varices
My wife’s aunt died from Cirrhosis of the liver and “so much blood” is exactly what my wife said she saw.
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Good question. Gasses certainly expand significantly when ascending to the roughly 5000’ cabin pressure altitude.
Which is readily apparent as the cabin quickly fills with farts. Yes, that’s a thing.
Dissolved gasses in the bloodstream will also be affected by this, though not quite as drastically. Still a thing a though. That’s why you don’t get on a plane (or even hike above 500m) within 24 hours after you’ve been scuba diving.
But if you accidently do, or it’s an emergency and you need to fly, at least for some flights you can ask the flight crew to raise the cabin pressure so you don’t get bent.
So all that said, yes, it certainly could be a possible contributing factor.
Unsure, but it probably didn’t help.
Just another reason I’m glad I don’t care to drink alcohol… did not know this was even a thing 🤢
Well that is pretty horrific
The only time I see ER docs panics and asked for another ER doc to be on “stand by” for emotional support is when they need to change a leaky Blakemore tube.
You know it’s a been a bad day when you arrive to your shift and the Blakemore box is out…
I forgot the medical term but when you have a REALLY bad liver the blood starts to take other ways to the heart to circumvent it (kollateral paths).
One path is going through your oesophagus so your venes widen very much. With the widening the risk of a rupture starts to increase very much and as soon as it does, there is nothing much that can save you.
I am not saying he got that but the description fits very much on point.
The word you’re looking for is esophageal varices
Obviously I doubt this but it’s a final phase of ebola.
Nah ebola is more of a oozing bloody mass. Gushing isn’t possible because low blood pressure is another complication. Also, late stage ebola this man wouldn’t be walking anywhere. Let alone well enough to be allowed on a airplane.
Disseminated intravascular coagulation, it’s when you get a bunch of clots, that uses up all your platelets, and you bleed out because you can no longer clot.
This wouldn’t explain what caused the bleed in the first place, nor how rapidly and profusely they were bleeding. Esophageal varices is a better explanation
Yeah, your explanation is probably a better one.
For real, I need a plausible explanation
Check the comments again, seems like we got it 🙂
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Ebola virus?
Oddly enough, alcohol abuse. It’s called esophageal varices.
It’s basically caused by veins in your esophagus rupturing. The same way you can have veins hemorrhage near your anus, causing hemorrhoids. In your esophagus, it’s usually caused by an enlarged liver putting pressure on the surrounding veins. And an enlarged liver is usually caused by end-stage alcoholism.
So the dude had an enlarged liver, (likely sue to a lifetime of alcohol abuse,) popped veins in his esophagus, and started coughing up massive amounts of blood. The dude likely wouldn’t have survived even if he was sitting in an ER when it happened. By the time it happens, it’s usually too late to fix; The victim will drown in their own blood before doctors have a chance to fix it.
But as a random onlooker with no idea what’s happening, it’s absolutely horrifying to see. It looks like something straight out the beginning of a zombie movie. Hell, even if you know exactly what’s happening, it’s still horrifying to see. But at least if you recognize it, you know it’s not contagious.
Source: Dated an EMT for a while, and she had a patient deal with one right after we started dating. I got morbidly curious, and regret the ensuing google searches.
I want to know too
Zingaya
T -virus
Probably scared him too
Still better than flying next to a baby.
Imagine sitting next to this guy when it happens. That must be fuckin traumatizing
Imagine being that guy dying, listening to you scream your brains out in his final moments.
Seems like both suck pretty badly.
Yeah they’re both pretty equal.
imagine being the one trying to give him CPR
That’s now called “drinking blood”
Blood for the blood god?
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Ruined clothes 😱
Hugs to his family and the poor flight crew who are no doubt traumatized by this and probably having to deal with an investigation, etc.
I’ve seen this movie. It did not end well.
Jesus, the beginning of the Fringe series came to my mind!
That’s the show, thank you! I was thinking X-Files but I just knew it was wrong.
It would be my immediate thought if I were on that plane. I’d be convinced he was patient zero.
I have read horror stories that started like this. I am not sure I want to know what happened.
If I was in the plane, I would be like “yep, it’s a coin toss between zombies or the strain.”
I’ve seen some esophageal varices as a medic and let me tell you those guys are bleeders. Feel bad for people not knowing the situation, it honestly would look like he had something contagious so I can understand the freaking out. People barely survive this with care immediately available in a hospital so he really had no hope once it ruptured.
That was my thought too. A portal hypertensive crisis following exertion leading to rupture of varices. I can’t think of much else that would present like that besides maybe Ebola Zaire or something, but that would have a noticeable prodrome and “coffee grounds” in the emesis.
I ate a hot dog at the airport in San Juan once. The result is I lost 1/3 of my body weight, but it wasn’t blood.
You are shitting me.
Close.
I’d rather wait for some more reliable sources than Business Insider quoting from Blick. But yeah, scary.
Well, Business Insider did link to flightradar, which shows that the flight in question (they said this past Thursday, which was the 8th) did in fact divert and return to the originating airport at Bangkok on that day. Which isn’t necessarily great evidence, but it’s better than nothing.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A 63-year-old man died during a Lufthansa flight this week after losing "liters of blood’ in a scene that terrified passengers.
The unidentified man boarded a Lufthansa flight from Bangkok to Munich with his wife on Thursday, according to Swiss-German outlet Blick.
Witnesses Martin and Karin Missfelder told Blick that they sat in the row diagonally behind the male passenger and his wife.
“He then called for a doctor over the loudspeaker and a young, around 30-year-old man from Poland with poor English looked at the German,” Karin Missfelder said.
Data from flightradar24, an online air traffic tracker, showed that the flight departed from the Bangkok International Airport at 12:07 a.m. before diverting back amid the chaos.
Last year, Lufthansa made headlines after a flight from Texas to Germany experienced severe turbulence that sent people and food flying into the air.
The original article contains 457 words, the summary contains 138 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
you guys ever read The Strain?
Time to book an AirBnb in the far away country for 29 days
Seems like over the last couple of days this news is posted everywhere. I’m sure this kind of stuff happens every now and again, so why is it being pushed now? What is the purpose? What are we getting distracted from that needs our attention?
Touch grass dude
