Bled To Death From Gastrointestinal Tract

**kellyhound** · #11 ● 06-28-2016, 04:26 AM

The curse of the white tiles

Entropy · #12 ● 06-28-2016, 05:41 AM

That's what an alcoholic bleed-out looks like. He's awfully young for that, though. Cirrhosis of the liver causes very high venous pressure and it seems like they all go kaput at once - esophogeal and gut. Poor guy. I read an article by a medical examiner who said they all take their clothes off and panic when they start to bleed because they don't know why blood is coming from every orifice. Hell of a way to die.

Exactly what I was thinking, ruptured oesophageal varices. Bleeding is at first slow, travels through the gut, but worsens. Patient feels sick due to blood in the stomach and GI tract, begins to vomit, which of course decimates the already ruptured varices and it's all downhill from there. Prolonged haemotemesis, malaena, and every patient I've attended has been found lying in a room / apartment / house totally covered in blood, blood everywhere. You can even track the patient's increasingly erratic and desperate movements around the place.... :(

albie54 · #13 ● 06-28-2016, 01:52 PM

I used to working in the ER in the hospital in Fresno, Calif. We used to get alcoholic GI bleeders in, during the late 70', and early eighties, when I worked there.
The doctors put an apparatus on them, that looks like a football helmet, and but a"bladder" containing ice water into their stomach. Then they would use the "helmet" to put traction on the rubber bladder.
A lot of alcoholics, especially street people, have very poor nutrition.... which exacerbates the issue.