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What can cause human blood to turn blue?

Just the other day we told you a story abouthow an 81-year-old lover of healthy eating was so overdoing eating healthy food that he nearly lost his kidneys. Judging by the statistics, this news has interested many of our readers - do you want something else like that? Fortunately, there are a lot of similar medical stories, and one of them has happened recently in the American state of Rhode Island. A 25-year-old girl came to the local hospital with complaints of weakness, breathing problems and a bluish tint of the skin. During the test, it turned out that her blood had turned a dark blue color.

The cause of blue blood is oxygen starvation

Inspection of the girl engaged in a doctor named OtisWarren Fortunately, he had vast experience and had already seen patients with blue blood. Suspecting that the cause of the blue tint of the girl’s skin, nails and blood was oxygen starvation, the doctor decided to measure the oxygen saturation of her blood. His flair did not disappoint - while the saturation of blood with oxygen in a healthy person is 97-100%, in the patient this figure was 67%.

Causes of Blue Blood

Dr. Warren diagnosed the girlmethemoglobinemia. The reason for this rare disease is a change in the form of iron - this trace element ceases to provide tissue with oxygen, which leads to oxygen starvation. From his medical experience, the doctor recalled that the cause of this disease may be the excessive use of certain drugs, such as painkillers and antibiotics.

The blue blood of a 24 year old girl

And in this case, he did not lose. It turned out that on the eve of the girl’s tooth ached a lot and before going to bed she took a large dose of anesthetic containing local benzocaine anesthetic. It was he who caused oxygen starvation, and in one night, the patient's oxygen-rich bright red blood turned blue.

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The effects of oxygen starvation

If the girl didn’t go to the hospital on time,the consequences could be extremely sad. The fact is that with oxygen starvation, a person may have irreparable damage to the brain, the final result of which is death. Fortunately, an experienced doctor knew what to do and injected a girl with a substance called methylene blue. He restored the work of an important blood element of hemoglobin, which has the ability to capture oxygen and deliver them to organs. After spending the night in the hospital, the girl began to feel better and was released home.

See also: Surgeons successfully extinguished a fire in a patient's chest

This story can be considered excellent.a reminder that medications must be handled with extreme care. It is always worth remembering that even popular antibiotics, which are often prescribed by attending physicians, can be dangerous to human health. For example, do you know about the dangers of oxolinic acid, which is usually prescribed for urinary tract infections? Recently, scientists have found that because of the use of this antibiotic, many people develop cardiovascular diseases. What exactly happens to their body can be found in our material.