Eli5: Do people choke on ice cubes and how do people know during the autopsy?

Question

Also when it melts does the melted ice go into the lungs or the stomach?

In: 17

Answer 1

I’m sitting here next to a Speech Pathologist at work (at a hospital), so I asked her. This profession specifically deals with the physiology of speech and swallowing, and she’s an expert on the causes of choking and aspiration, among other things.

Melt-water could come out your mouth, be swallowed, or be aspirated into the lungs, depending on what’s blocked and what’s working. Water down the trachea past the vocal cords should cause violent coughing. Blocking the trachea usually leaves the esophagus open, an blocking the esophagus usually leaves the trachea open.

Her opinion, which I share, is that this would extremely difficult, and thus, extremely rare. An ice cube small enough half swallow and lodge where it would block your epiglottis, would melt rapidly enough that you would either regurg. or swallow it within 30 seconds or less. Those would be LONG seconds, for sure, and the ice would probably be very painful while stuck and afterwards, for certain.

A big mouthful of pellet or crushed ice might conform to the space an sort of pack in, but would likewise melt. Painful as it would be, i should clear before you pass out, and if not, it will clear after you pass out (and you have several minutes before brain death begins) . You would probably wake up panicking an coughing.

Water down the lungs isn’t good, but can be coughed out. Aspirating like that won’t drown you, but can cause bronchitis/pneumonia.

A large ice cube could get stuck in the back of your thoat, behind the palate at the back of the tongue, but wouldn’t completely occlude the airway.

The only likely scenarios here are either a very weak and compromised individual (weak swallows, inability to sense aspiration, paralysis from a head or high neck injury, stroke patient, etc.) somehow stuffing their mouth and throat full of pellet ice, packing lots of it back there far enough to block the epiglottis the next time they swallow. Or, someone pulling a stunt like trying to sword-swallow a huge icicle or deep-throat a long popsicle, OR violence, something like an attacker jamming a huge ice cube or icicle down the throat of an unconscious or helpless person with force and maybe holding it there.

Otherwise, one in a million.