A CPR/resuscitation scenario is always a thrill in most of the TV series/ movie, but in actual life, it isn’t. One of the main concern is SHXT and PXE ( feces and urine)… In about 1/4 of the case, patients(either with sign of life or not) are incontinence. You just have to tolerate the smell. The nurses wouldn’t try to clean up the mass if no sign of life was noted. The 30 mins scenario is sometimes a smell tolerance game.
Well, I had this middle-aged psychiatric patient sent over by the local asylum after she collapsed. A lady with BMI of >40…as usual she was intubated but I told my nurses that prep the ETT anyway, I said there is a 50/50 chance the tube is in the stomach.(but in fact, their record is 100% esophagus intubation…).
The patient arrived and as I had predicted – I had to re-intubate her…The nurse who came with the patient told me –she was seen in a hospital nearby for Acute gastroenteritis earlier that day. She was soaked in her own feces…I had to do my job…I certified her after 15mins later…
I remembered the film “silence of the lambs”, when Jodie Foster and Scott Glenn entered a Autopsy scene – they had applied some whitish cream over their upperlips to barricade the smell of the degraded corpse….Just wander where I could get those….(tiger balm won’t work…I tried it during my days in the casualty department as coroner)
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