So, One Passenger Sucked Urine Out of Another
Jennifer Billock November 25, 2019
Two Chinese surgeons performed a particularly invasive procedure on a plane to save a man who was in horrific pain and going into shock. The man suffered from an enlarged prostate and his bladder was blocked. Lucky for him, his fellow passengers were able to come to the rescue.
A man with an enlarged prostate was lucky that two surgeons were on his recent flight from China to New York. Ten hours into the flight, a medical emergency was called—the elderly man’s belly was swollen, he was sweating, and he was beginning to show signs of going into shock. Because of his enlarged prostate, the two surgeons, Surgeons Zhang Hong from the First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University in Guangzhou, and Xiao Zhanxiang from Hainan Provincial People’s Hospital in Haikou, were able to determine the man’s bladder had about a liter of urine trapped inside.
Surgeons Zhang Hong (left) and Xiao Zhanxiang reflect on their mid-flight medical emergency.
“If we had not dealt with the situation in time, the patient’s life would have been at risk,” Zhang told the South China Morning Post.
In order to help the man, the two surgeons put together an instrument to help get the urine out. They used a syringe needle, oxygen mask tubing, tape, and straws from milk boxes. The man was laid on his side in the back of the airplane on top of some blankets. The surgeons tried to relieve some of the internal pressure by using the needle, but it wasn’t large enough—so Zhang siphoned the urine out through the straws himself.
The doctors used tape, tubing and straws to perform an emergency procedure on the patient.
“It was an emergency situation,” Zhang told the South China Morning Post. “I couldn’t figure out another way. When I saw that the man could hardly bear the pain any more, my only thought was how to get the urine out of his bladder.”
[Image: Photo source, China Southern Airlines via WeChat]
The urine wont shoot out, it will likely dribble inside the torso. So to get it to come externally the Doctors had to suck it with a straw. Would Americans Doctors have done this? probably not. They would have stabilized the patient until the plane landed.
The prostate was so enlarged, it squeezed off the urinary flow from the bladder.
Incredibly gross and brilliant. I'm still a bit confused though as to how it gets blocked...maybe I don't wanna know. My next confusion would be, if there's a dam, the water (or piss) is blocked, but if you put a hole in that dam, you don't need to fish the water out, it'll come shooting out, so when they poked a hole in this dude big enough for a straw, I figured he would've been shooting out like a geyser. Again, super gross, but amazing work by the doctors, kudos.
Outstanding job, doctors!! Your actions renew my pride in our profession! You should be proud - I am proud of your actions. With respect to jonsail's comment: the doctors figured out a problem in a resource-limited setting, and did what they needed to do to solve it. American doctors do this every day...my hope is that your hypothetical question was in the spirit of "do American doctors remember how to function without a team of 20 people, MRI, CT, etc"...this is done at critical access hospitals every day. If the hypothetical was was in the spirit of "would the trust fund baby American docs stoop to touch a patient, let along siphon urine with their mouths?": In the decade since I started clinical training, I've been regularly urinated, defecated, bled, coughed and spit on...and threatened, assaulted and sued by patients for the privilege. What do you do for your community every day?
Jennifer - What a shameful headline for a heroic deed. Yellow journalism at its finest?