I assume the astronauts are healthy, thoroughly vetted by doctors, trained in basic medical principles, and have basic medical supplies on board.
But what happens if they get appendicitis or kidney stones or some other acute onset problem?
In: 2048
TLDR: lots of precautions. Many things can bw treated like on earth, more invasive procedures have been proven on rats but never on humans.
There‘s a lot of things you can do before going to space to ensure health
– firstly potential astronauts are screened for risk factors, chronic diseases, etc.
– before going to space astronauts are quarantined to ensure no infectious disease is carried on-board
– astronauts are overall fit, which itself is a big factor to avoiding illnesses
– In case of the ISS there‘s always lne medical officer (educated doctor, with additional training for space medicine) on the station. I assume this would also be the case for any future missions
Precaitions aside, what actually happens when a medical problem arises?
Infectious diseases can mostly be treated like on earth with medications, more on that later. Other conditions such as blood clots van also be treated with medication (tho not fully reliably). That actually happened in 2020, tho the astronaut was kept anonymous.
Now onto the spicy part: actual physical trauma.
– many tests are either unavailable or unreliable in space. You simply don‘t have the infrasgructure of a hospital in space. Other diagnostix tests might just generally not work well in microgravity. For example a perforated stomach creates air bubbles in places where they shouldn‘t be which can be detected; without gravity the gas wouldn‘t rise the same way making it an unreliable test.
– fluids behave differently in space, causing massive problems. If you have a vein bleeding the blood won‘t flow, instead it‘ll pool around where the wound is. That means internal bleeding can cause serious problems, as the wound won‘t heal as you‘d expect on earth. Normally after an incision blood would pool in that cut and you can suck it away. In space however the blood would spurt out and fly around.
– pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetic are part of pharmacology. They are all about how medicine moves around the body and how they work. They are quite complex for an ELI5, so suffice to say that we‘re not entirely sure how differently medicines behave in microgravity. This causes problems with, for example, anasthesia.
Surgery has been performed on rats in space, proving that any surgery is feasi le in soce, as long as the patient, doctors/nurses and tools are adequately restrained.minimally invasive surgeries are far preferred over open surgeries. This is also the case on earth, but in soace it‘s even more imprtant. Just imagine a guy in space with his knee cut open – fluids would be everywhere, it‘d be quite a mess. Typically mlnimally invasive surgies is the preferred method – in soace it‘s even more important. Since open wpunds cause problems you‘d best only male small cuts through which you insert your tool.
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