Something must have gotten miscommunicated somewhere along the line, but you’d think Fox would have some editors around who took introductory biology and remember the basics. The article says the surgeon “cut her husband’s aortic valve, which supplies blood to the heart”. The aortic valve is where blood *exits* the heart, and cutting the valve wouldn’t result in blood loss, though it would certainly result in major loss of blood *pressure* and in poorly oxygenated blood, as a lot of blood pumped out of the left ventricle to the aorta would flow backwards into the ventricle, preventing the ventricle from filling up with newly oxygenated blood arriving from the lungs through the left atrium. As the first branches off the aorta, just after the aortic valve, the coronary arteries (which are what supply the heart muscle with oxygenated blood) would be first in line to get blood.
However, to get to the aortic valve, the surgeon would have to have first cut through either the aorta or the left ventricle — if it was the aorta (which is more likely, since the ventricle would be awfully tough to cut through by accident), it’s a miracle the guy is still alive at all. This would be comparable to rupturing an aortic aneurysm, which is one of the surest routes to immediate death, even if you’re already in the hospital and in the process of being treated.
Yep. It would have been nice to get a story that made sense.
You are the smartest poster on this thread...I had a couple of similar thoughts, but it has been a long time since my basic medical training in AF. One other minor miss in this news article - Travis is closer to San Francisco or Oakland, it is more than 90 miles from Sacremento.
Saw this. Thought of you...