Has anyone ever died from their stomach acid?

199 views

So I learned that we have so much mucus in our stomach it protects us from our stomach, is this true and if so, has anyone ever died from not having enough mucus in their stomach and die from the acid?

In: 4

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Depends on how you define cause of death.

If someone is shot, their cause of death is not actually considered to be that shot, but rather something like bloodloss.

Say your stomach is somehow penetrated and its content leaks into your body. This will likely cause a Peritonitis (essentially an infection of your abdomen), which is fatal wirhout immediate medical attention. So in that sense you could say someone died to their stomach acid.

Ibuprofen abuse could also lead to a „death to stomach acid“. I‘ll spare you the exact details, but to summarize: ibuprofen abuse has several effects, one of which is the ceasing of stomach mucosa. I.e. the protective layer stops rebuilding and the acid gradually damages the underlying tissue. Untreated this would end up in a peritonitis, again.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In addition to the fine answers already given, I would suggest that stomach acid has certainly killed people through aspiration pneumonia.

Aspiration, in this case, refers to breathing, not hopes and dreams. In a medical sense, aspiration usually refers to breathing in a liquid. If you’ve ever coughed and choked from “something going down the wrong pipe” or taken in water and nearly drowned, you’ve aspirated.

Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs. If you breathe in something astringent, it can damage your lungs, allowing an infection to move in. This is especially true if there are bits of food in your stomach acid. For people with weakened immune systems, it doesn’t take much for them to aspirate, get infected and pass away.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A lack of mucus allows the stomach acid to eat ulcers in the stomach wall. Enough of these can kill you in a matter of hours by bleeding to death.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes and no.

If you have an ulcer which doesn’t get treated and it leads to leakage then you can die, but generally it’s going to be from infection and bleeding and not from the stomach acid alone.

Similarly, complications with GERD can lead to death.