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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 19 2016, @02:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the almost-became-what-he-ate dept.

A healthy, 47-year-old man who ate a hamburger topped with pureed ghost pepper ended up in a San Francisco emergency room after a life-threatening retching fit:

The man's condition, a "spontaneous esophageal rupture," which is also called Boerhaave syndrome, is "a relatively rare phenomenon," said lead study author Dr. Ann Arens, who was a physician in the department of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco at the time of the man's case in the summer of 2015. (Arens is currently an emergency medicine doctor and medical toxicologist at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis.)

Spontaneous esophageal rupture is caused by violent vomiting and retching, Arens said. In other words, the man's reaction to the ghost pepper, rather than the pepper itself, caused the rupture, Arens said. The condition is very dangerous, and is fatal in 20 to 40 percent of all cases, even when patients receive treatment, the report said. "If [the condition is] left untreated, mortality approaches 100 percent," the authors wrote. When patients die from a ruptured esophagus, the cause of death is likely a "rapid and fatal infection," Arens told Live Science.

The man was sent home from the hospital 23 days after the operation, the report said. His feeding tube was still in place when he was sent home, but Arens said the tube was only temporary, until the esophagus healed. She said she believes the man is currently doing well. When Arens spoke to the man after the surgery, he "did not seem keen to try [eating a ghost pepper] again," she said.

Ghost peppers are also known as bhut jolokia. Also at USA Today.

Esophageal Rupture After Ghost Pepper Ingestion (DOI: 10.1016/j.jemermed.2016.05.061) (DX)

Spontaneous esophageal rupture, Boerhaave syndrome, is a rare condition encountered by emergency physicians, with a high mortality rate. This case serves as an important reminder of a potentially life-threatening surgical emergency initially interpreted as discomfort after a large spicy meal.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday October 19 2016, @03:30PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday October 19 2016, @03:30PM (#416170) Journal

    That was the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality.

    Funny anecdote, but I highly doubt this claim. If you're going to count infections and deaths in other people that occur because of operations, a LOT of germs used to be spread without modern surgical hygiene -- and not just to the patient. I'm pretty sure that there have been many points in history when some "doctor" took out a knife and cut into a cyst or some other disease-ridden mass, which sprayed stuff all over the room, either hitting people directly or spreading to them during clean-up, thus infecting a bunch of other people. And when you had stuff like plague with reasonably high mortality rates, it's very likely there were many situations that had a 300% mortality (or more) from an incident like this.

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