Can a needle reach the heart? Real case

Sewing up a torn shirt or other clothingit is important to act as carefully as possible. The fact is that sewing needles are easily lost and it can be very difficult to find them. Having lost hope of finding a corner on their own, sometimes people find it only when it digs into their leg. After that, the victims need to go to the hospital for an incision to be made and the foreign object removed from the body. To prevent such cases from arising, in childhood, many of us were frightened by the fact that a needle caught in the leg could begin to move through the veins, reach the heart and cause death. It sounds like a real nightmare and such horror films, perhaps, did not need to be told to children. But they were very effective and we were very careful. But maybe there is some truth in these terrible stories? In fact, a sewing needle can actually reach the heart, but only under certain conditions. Recently, such a case was recorded in one of the foreign hospitals.

Are all the horrors that were told to us in childhood - is it really true?

A needle in the heart

I'll tell you straight - the needle that hit the legdefinitely cannot reach the heart. Yes, sewing needles are very thin and their thickness is calculated in fractions of a millimeter. Usually it is indicated on the package and if the number 60 is written on it, then the diameter of the needle is 0.6 millimeters. Assuming that the needle is not stuck in the leg, but in an area with wide blood vessels such as a 25 mm aorta, the likelihood that it will reach the heart,very small. After all, do not forget that the length of the sewing needle is about 3 centimeters and it simply will not be able to bypass the winding blood pathways. Sooner or later, the needle will stick into the tissue and it will have to be pulled out surgically.

The aorta is the largest vessel in the circulatory system

What happens if you swallow a needle?

However, according to the scientific publication Science Alert,the needle may well stick into the heart if swallowed. Recently, doctors from the American state of Massachusetts reported how a 17-year-old boy came to them with a complaint of pain in the heart. For three days, the teenager suffered from acute pain that spread to the back and intensified while lying down and deep breathing. Blood tests showed elevated protein levels, which could indicate a heart injury. During further examination, the patient was diagnosed with inflammation of the heart muscle.

Needle in patient's heart

See also: Why is the needle prickly?

Computed tomography that allowsto study the insides of organisms without opening, showed that there is a 3.5-centimeter "sharp object" in the right ventricle of the guy's heart. It became clear that a sewing needle had entered the patient's body, but he insisted that he had not swallowed it and had not received any injuries. But then he remembered that he had recently sewn clothes, sometimes holding the needle in his lips. Most likely, it was then that the guy swallowed the needle. Maybe he knew perfectly well that there was a needle inside him and just didn't want to admit it. However, this is not our business, and the main thing is that he successfully underwent open-heart surgery and removed a foreign object.

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It is important to note that this is far from the first suchhappening. In 2016, a needle in the heart was found in a 48-year-old woman from China. Due to the trauma, she suffered a stroke, in which blood circulation in the brain is impaired. It is important to note that in these cases the needle enters the heart not through the circulatory system, but when passing through the esophagus, making holes in the organs and causing bleeding. All of these stories should draw people's attention to the precautions when handling such dangerous tools. Losing them is definitely not worth it, because even if you step on the needle, the pain can be unbearable. And it's not even worth talking about the horrors of getting him out in the hospital. Although, when using anesthesia, everything should be painless.

A needle in the heart of a 48-year-old female patient

Sewing needles are dangerous because they are out of control.and nobody knows where they will end up. But at the same time, scientists want to develop the same tiny robots that could penetrate the most distant parts of the human body. They could be used for drug delivery and even surgery. Recently, researchers from the US state of Massachusetts have developed a robotic worm that can enter the brain and cure a stroke. You can read more about this technology in this article.