eli5 Why are air embolisms so deadly? Like, what about an air bubble can’t your body fix pretty easily?

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I would have thought that an air bubble gets popped and we move on. That the gas eventually dissolves and gets passed somehow.

So, what’s going on? Why does the heart stop so violently? It acts like there was an implosion on the inside…

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Some other commenters explained it like an intellectual… here is the “ELI5 version”

Some types of gas are like putting sugar in water and other types of gas are like putting sand in water. Nitrogen is like the sand and will get stuck inside your blood vessels (the really small pipes inside your body that carry blood) but other types of gas will dissolve into the water like sugar. If the sand goes in the water it will clog the pipes but the sugar will just dissolve.

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