Word: emboli
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fatal of all heart ailments are those due to bloodclotting, e.g., coronary thrombosis. For reasons not yet perfectly understood (too little exercise, poor metabolism, infection), blood cells sometimes begin to stick together to form a thrombus (a stationary clot). But the thrombus grows, may eventually let loose daughter clots (emboli) which swim on to lodge at vital bottlenecks in the blood stream. A thrombus which lodges in a coronary (heart) artery, blocking off the blood supply to the heart muscle, can kill within a few minutes; a clot in the brain causes a stroke...
Sweet Clover. The remarkable drug known as dicoumarin may even reduce to zero the 6% of post-operative deaths caused by thrombi (fixed blood clots) and emboli (wandering blood clots). Dicoumarin is found in spoiled sweet clover, was originally tracked down as a poison which causes hemorrhages in cows, is now synthesized...
Although doctors have tried the new technique only on dogs, they hope to use it soon on human beings. Not only would it be invaluable for accidents, said Dr. Carlson last week, but it would also enable doctors to cut open blood vessels and remove emboli-clots which block circulation, may cause death...