Word: embolus
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Doctors dread an embolus (from the Greek for a stopper), whether it be a blood clot, a blob of fat, or a bubble of air. An embolus can travel through an artery until it is caught at a narrow point, then shut off circulation to the tissues beyond. But last week two Georgetown University neurosurgeons reported that they had gone to a lot of trouble to make ultramodern emboli in the form of plastic pellets, and had used them to correct a brain defect...
This week, in the Annals of Surgery, Drs. Isidor Schwaner Ravdin and Francis Clark Wood told how they saved the life of their young colleague with one of the boldest operations in modern medicine-removal of an embolus from a main artery...
...confused with embolism. A thrombus stays in one place; an embolus, which might be a blood clot, or a pocket of air or oil, moves through the blood stream. If an embolus settles down, it becomes a thrombus...
...instant an embolus seats itself like a valve in an artery, the victim usually feels an excruciating pain at that point. Simultaneously "the affected extremity becomes paralyzed, cold and pale, the pulses disappear, and in a few hours the skin becomes mottled with a bluish hue. . . . On the fingers and toes, or sometimes over prominent bones . . . dark blisters appear which may open and from which the gangrene spreads...
...Murray's operation for embolus is to cut until he can handle the affected artery at the site of the plugging. Above and below the embolus he applies soft rubber-covered clamps to the artery. Over the embolus "a longitudinal incision, 0.5 to 1 cm. long, is made. The mass is expressed by the fingers without difficulty and the lower clamp is removed to allow return bleeding to flush the distal [away from the heart] segment and similarly the proximal [toward the heart] segment is flushed and the clamp reapplied. With fine oiled silk suture on arterial needles...