Chinese Surgeons Replace Esophagus with Colon

[Laurel]

No Joke! That oughtta give your dinner a different taste, eh?

http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=220581

 

[Edith Mycrotch]

Just another excuse for the people who talk "crap" all the time!

 

[RonG]

I think they can form an epiglottis from his foreskin.

 

[Melody_lane]

Caustic soda, eh? Wonder where one would go about buying some of that-I have some people who use their mouths as if it were an asshole, so they may as well have a colon for an esophagus.


<smirks>

 

[Rosebud]

ewwww then everything you eat would taste like shit....sorry

 

[CelestialBody]

 

[RonG]

Caustic soda, eh? Wonder where one would go about buying some of that-I have some people who use their mouths as if it were an asshole, so they may as well have a colon for an esophagus.


<smirks>

Caustic Soda, o/wise known as Sodium Hydroxide, is a fairly common industrial chemical. It goes into solution fairly well and is used in a lot of wastewater treatment for fixing pH but is also a common raw material for making Monosodium Glutamate (MSG). With as much MSG as gets thrown into Chinese food (at least in the states), the knucklehead may have thought it was edible. Or he was just being incredibly stupid. This stuff burns and your first reaction to ingest water makes it worse since it dissociates a whole bunch of very reactive ions that beat the heck out of soft tissue.

All kidding aside, different hydroxides being sold as Lye (potassium or sodium hydroxides) are a building block for meth labs in the states and we have had a bunch of kids get burned or screwed up due to playing with concentrated forms of this stuff.

A basic rule of thumb - if you wouldn't feed it to a horse, a human ought to stay away from it also.

 

[Oliver Clozoff]

Ollie-is that you?

Nope, but I had to wonder about "Edith Mycrotch" after having posted earlier about Pat McCrotch earlier.

RonG is completely right about the consequences of ingesting extremely basic substances. If you're ever in the bizarre predicament of being forced to ingest either a glass of strong acid and a glass of strong base, don't even hesitate. Gulp that acid down.

The human body contains approximately 20 times as much bicarbonate to buffer acids as it does acids to buffer bases. Normal Human pH is around 7.4, but you can survive at pH down below 7. However, a pH above 7.6 will almost certainly kill you.

Some of the most horrendous emergency room tragedies occur from strong base ingestions. It causes instantaneous liquefaction necrosis of the oropharynx and esophagus and can actually dissolve entirely through the esophagus and threaten surrounding strutures like the lungs.

That's a really cool surgery they're trying. You have more colon than you really need, so it's often used for other procedures (to fashion a stomach or a bladder to replace these organs when they're lost to cancer, etc.)

The problem I'd foresee with this is that although you may graft colonic tissue into a new location for a new function, it remains colonic tissue. It won't perform the normal waves of peristaltic contractions that carry food to the stomach (this is why you can swallow upside down). There's a definite risk of it becoming obstructed.

It will also continue to secrete normal colonic mucous secretions which ordinarily help ease the passage of feces. I don't think that would make too big a deal with it draining into the stomach, but it sometimes gums up the works when a section of resected bowel is used as a makeshift urinary bladder.

Still, when your only other option is a peg tube, I think I'd try the colon for a throat. I'd just want to see the technique perfected a bit first.

 

[Edith Mycrotch]

Sorry about the name confusion guys, kinda been lurking around and decided this too good to pass on. I'm just another FNG that might get into the swing of things.

 

[Sparky Kronkite]

Just makes ya think......

A whole new meaning to the words "deep throat." I mean, really deep!