I'm going to bed myself. Before I do, I have to comment on House tonight. He was simply wrong. The conclusion of the show was that the woman had a broken bone, and fat emboli leaking into her organs from the broken bone, causing all of her symptoms. In the show, she had a broken toe, which was causing the troubles.
No freakin' way! This is my expert opinion, as someone who has a great deal of expertise in the field of acute lung disease, and personal research involvement in embolic lung injury. The broken bones that can, but don't always, cause this kind of damage are BIG bones. There isn't enough cherubicty marrow in the big toe, if there is any, to do this much damage to any one organ, let alone all the organs they had involved. Second, there isn't enough blood flow from the toe even if the marrow were there (which it ISN'T) to deliver all that fat. Third, all of the fatty emboli could only go into the lungs- all of your venous blood flow goes through the pulmonary circulation before it goes to any other organs- otherwise you would deoxygenate rapidly and die. Because it has to go through the lungs, the fatty emboli would embolize in the pulmonary small arterioles, wouldn't even reach the pulmonary capillaries, because of how big the emboli can be (they can't physically become small enough to pass through the pulmonary capillaries without embolizing upstream in the arterioles). If they were small enough to pass through the pulmonary vessels, guess what? they would ALSO pass through all of the other capillaries, and wouldn't embolize at all.
Their writers are idiots.
vote for Laura. good night.
