Word: clot
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Their breathing apparatus-a system of tracheae that wander through the body like arteries of air-feeds oxygen to the organs up to 431 times as fast as lungs do. Their circulatory system frequently includes a mechanism that reverses blood flow when a clot obstructs the heart. A male moth's numerous "noses" are so keen that he can smell a female more than a mile away. And as for sex, insects hold the patents on mass reproduction. The East African queen termite lays 43,000 eggs a day, and in a single summer two common houseflies can multiply...
...most common form of heart attack is an occlusion (shutdown) caused by a thrombosis (clot formation) in one of the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart's own muscular walls. Physicians have long known that the dangerous clots usually form where a coronary artery is narrowed by a scaly deposit, or "plaque," of chalky, fatty material. But for all its importance, a nagging question has remained unanswered: How does the fatal clot really form...
This week, in the American Journal of Pathology, two San Francisco doctors offer an unexpected reply: the clot forms as the result of a reaction between arterial blood and material from a diseased part of the artery's walls. Along with the scaly deposit, it makes a plug that blocks blood flow...
Sudden Death. In at least 26 cases, the abscess burst outward, into the artery, and in ten the blood burst into the abscess. Either way, the result was the same. Blood mixed with material from inside the abscess to produce a clot that filled the artery cavity too tightly to be pushed along, thus blocking the arterial flow.* That part of the heart muscle beyond the plug, deprived of nourishing blood and oxygen, lost its elastic muscularity, disrupted the heart's delicate electrical-conduction system, and eventually stopped working. In some cases the victims of these occlusions were dead...
...happy accident occurred, said Dr. C. Thomas Flotte (pronounced Float), while he was treating a patient with a clot in one of the renal veins. Dr. Flotte took a presurgery blood sample, and the laboratory reported a cholesterol level of about 400 mg., or double the normal. During the operation, the patient received a pint of dextran, both to maintain his blood volume and to reduce clotting. Then he got a pint a day for two days. Dr. Flotte sent a fresh blood sample to the lab and got back a cholesterol reading...