PMCT Images. Nurse advanced NG tube until she heard a pop, then tried an air bolus to ensure placement. Patient did not survive.

    by Old-Psychology-2400

    44 Comments

    1. horseshandbrake on

      Naso-gastric, supposed to go up nose and back down down to the stomach.
      That procedure went VERY wrong

    2. Grouchy-Flamingo-280 on

      When a patient is unable to feed themselves, either by choice, paralysis, coma etc, a tube is fed into their stomach to pipe in nutrients.

      This tube is pushed up through the nasal cavity, where it should follow the throat back down into the stomach. Here, when the nurse was doing this, the tube punctured the tissue below the brain cavity and entered the brain- this was the popping noise.

      The tube coiled in the brain as shown. When air was administered through the tube to clear it, it went to the brain instead of the stomach, whic contributed to the patient’s death.

    3. So, the feeding tube stuck up the nose “popped” into the brain instead of going down into the stomach. PMCT is a post-mortem CT scan. The nurse killed this patient.

    4. Very sad for the patient and their family but god I hope the nurse was fired and the hospital is sued to the ground…

    5. was the person unconscious? how would they not be screaming? What happened to the nurse after and during?

      Absolutely awful.

      [found the article](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21715048/). it seems that the patient had a circumstance where they were susceptible to this. They were probably also unconscious after a procedure.

      “We report a case of inadvertent placement of small-bore feeding tube into the brain stem and spinal cord in a patient with a history of previous endoscopic transnasal resection of clival chordoma. We discuss the management of this complication and the strategies that have been developed to avoid this complication in the future.”

    6. Echoing_Screams on

      So….. she murdered a guy? Thats literally what that is correct? Im assuming charges are being filed

    7. Nic3_Guy_does_69 on

      I live in a third-world country and thought I’d seen peak medical incompetence(quacks and mis-diagnoses). Turns out there was DLC.

    8. An NG tube (nasogastric tube) is a thin, flexible tube inserted through the nose, down the throat, through the esophagus, and into the stomach, used for delivering nutrition, fluids, and medicine, or for removing stomach contents when a person can’t eat or swallow properly, for short-term feeding, or to relieve pressure.

    9. Using laymen’s terms usually help us dumb people with comprehension. Or am I on a medical field sub?

    10. FluffleMyRuffles on

      Holy cow, this is rare but apparently not unheard of. There are quite a few papers talking about other instances where a feeding tube is inserted into the brain.

    11. Someone please reassure me that this is fucking borderline impossible to do and that this nurse is out of this world incompetent. I do NG tube insertion sometimes and I don’t want this new phobia.

    12. This is why I’m real hesitant to put NG tubes in patients with bad skull fractures.

      Like at least go through the mouth instead.

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