Why does a bubble in a bloodstream cause your body to go haywire?

Question

Why does a bubble in a bloodstream cause your body to go haywire?

In: 78

Answer 1

Paramedic here-I’ve had this convo with an interventional cardiologist after he purposely foamed up some blood and injected it into cath line…

He said that he did that so that he could see the blood flow (bubbles show on the Xray video)through the heart. He explained that the air bubbles will dissipate as they pass through the lungs and that it would need to be a fairly large volume of air to cause any problems.

In order to cause any problems, there would need to be a large volume of air in a standard IV line, like more than 20 inches, injected into a vein…a few bubbles isn’t going to hurt in a vein. It would cause a problem in an arterial line, though. I don’t think art lines are going to be in place very often in a non-hospital setting

Answer 2

Paramedic here-I’ve had this convo with an interventional cardiologist after he purposely foamed up some blood and injected it into cath line…

He said that he did that so that he could see the blood flow (bubbles show on the Xray video)through the heart. He explained that the air bubbles will dissipate as they pass through the lungs and that it would need to be a fairly large volume of air to cause any problems.

In order to cause any problems, there would need to be a large volume of air in a standard IV line, like more than 20 inches, injected into a vein…a few bubbles isn’t going to hurt in a vein. It would cause a problem in an arterial line, though. I don’t think art lines are going to be in place very often in a non-hospital setting