The woman choked on rice dumplings and fell unconscious, and her family used the Heimlik method to "grab" a life

The Paper's reporter Lu Xinwen

Recently, the emergency department of the Third People's Hospital of Shenzhen (the Second Affiliated Hospital of Southern University of Science and Technology) rescued a 23-year-old patient, Ms. Su (pseudonym). Ms. Su suddenly choked when she ate zongzi and immediately fell unconscious. At this time, Ms. Su had difficulty breathing and cyanosis all over her body. Fortunately, the husband next to him had seen the popular science of Heimliquefa, and immediately helped his wife spit out part of the choked rice dumplings, and then dialed 120. Ten minutes after arriving at the hospital, the emergency department team of the Shenzhen Third Hospital, together with the respiratory endoscopy room and the Department of Otolaryngology, successfully intubated Ms. Su's endotrachea to make her airway unobstructed and her breathing resumed.

Choking on rice dumplings, Heimlikfa urgently saved his life

On October 21, Ms. Su, 23, was suddenly choked while eating rice dumplings. Because the rice dumplings blocked the airway, Ms. Su was unconscious due to lack of oxygen, and immediately fell to the ground, and a 2 cm opening appeared on her head. Ms. Su's husband, seeing his wife's full body cyanosis, immediately realized that his wife was blocked by rice dumplings and immediately used the Heimlik method to rescue her.

The Heimlich method is an emergency method that uses residual gas in the lungs to form an air stream to rush out foreign bodies, and is suitable for all asphyxia caused by foreign bodies in the airways. When the victim is an adult, the rescuer should stand behind the victim, hold his upper abdomen from behind, wrap his arms around his waist and abdomen, hold a fist in one hand, and press the fist inward between the victim's navel and ribs; the other hand is palmed over the fist, and the hands are squeezed inwards and upwards, repeatedly until the obstruction is spit out.

It is also Heimlik law that saved Ms. Su's life - Peng Denggao, deputy chief physician of shenzhen Third People's Hospital, introduced that once the human body is completely deprived of oxygen, about 4-5 minutes will cause irreversible serious damage to the brain, if there is no husband's rescue behavior, Ms. Su will be difficult to hold out until the arrival of emergency personnel.

However, due to the stickiness of the rice dumplings, Heimlikfa can only discharge a part, Ms. Su is still short of breath, her husband hastily dialed the 120 emergency number, during which because it is too uncomfortable, Ms. Su and her husband take turns to cut their throats with their hands, and Ms. Su's throat is blurred with blood and flesh.

Peng Denggao introduced that the throat mucosa is relatively fragile, and cutting the throat can easily lead to bleeding and edema of the patient's throat injury, which is not conducive to emergency personnel to detect airway foreign bodies. In this case, if the patient can still breathe on their own, they only need to wait for the ambulance to arrive.

Ten minutes after arriving at the hospital, the trachea was unclogged, and the CT showed diffuse pulmonary hemorrhage

When Ms. Su arrived at the Shenzhen Third Hospital, she was short of breath, cyanosis, blood oxygen saturation was only 84% (normal value was 95%-100%), and her response was relatively sluggish, but she was still able to breathe spontaneously. Peng Denggao said this is because there is also a gap between the airway mucosa and the rice dumplings for a small amount of airflow to pass through.

"Without the Heimlik law, Ms. Su insisted that the first responders would not arrive. But if her husband did not dial 120 in time, as time passed, Ms. Su was likely to gradually edema due to foreign body compression lack of oxygen and bleeding, eventually causing the gap to completely disappear and suffocate. Peng Denggao said.

After Ms. Su arrived at the hospital, the emergency department immediately contacted the Department of Otolaryngology and the Respiratory Endoscopy Room to rescue her. At the beginning, the operation team was ready to perform a tracheosectomy for Ms. Su, but because the texture of the rice dumplings was soft and the laryngoscopic probe found that there was no large foreign body in the patient's airway, it was eventually changed to endotracheal intubation, and while cleaning up the foreign body, the operation team also sucked out about 200 ml of bloody secretions from Ms. Su's trachea. After the foreign body is removed, the condition gradually stabilizes.

From the ambulance to the hospital to Ms. Su's airway was unobstructed and her breathing resumed, the whole process took more than ten minutes.

The postoperative CT showed that Ms. Su had developed diffuse pulmonary hemorrhage – when a foreign body entered the airway, the airway was closed or squeezed, and the gas in the airway "had nowhere to go", which led to rupture of the capillaries in the lungs.

After that, Ms. Su was transferred to the ICU for follow-up treatment and was successfully discharged from the hospital on October 26.

Editor-in-Charge: Cui Xuan