A MAN WHO BLED GREEN BLOOD
Blood is always associated with Red. But can you believe the fact that a man bled green blood during his leg surgery in Canada.
This must have reminded you of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, the Enterprise's
science officer who had green Vulcan blood. According to this science
fiction series, Mr. Spock had green blood because of the oxygen carrying
agent in Vulcan blood included copper rather than iron (The source that
causes the colour red). This was explained through Mr. Spock’s history
where he had a human mother and a Vulcan father, thus he inherited his
inability to decipher human emotion, as well as his green blood.
In
this unnatural case of a 42 year old man with green blood, the doctors
found out that it was due to a rare condition called
sulfhaemoglobinaemia, where sulphur is included into the oxygen-carrying
compound haemoglobin in red blood cells. The source of sulphur was the large doses of sumatriptan - 200 milligrams a day that the man had been taking for migraine.
The man had
undergone an urgent surgery because he had developed a dangerous
condition in his legs by sleeping in a sitting position. Asciotomies -
limb-saving procedures were conducted on the man, which involved making
surgical incisions to relieve pressure and swelling caused by the man's
condition, known as compartment syndrome. The syndrome involves swelling
and pressure in a restricted space which limits blood flow and causes
localized tissues and damage to the nerves. The reason behind this
syndrome is trauma, internal bleeding or a wound dressing.
According to Dr
Alana Flexman from St Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, the recovery of the
patient was uneventful and since he had stopped the dosage of
sumatriptan after surgery, after five weeks, no sulfhaemoglobin was
found in his blood.
