Reading a comicbook today, I chanced upon a page where the main character is undergoes some crude surgury…
He is restrained and given something to bite on has his chest is cut opened… The accompanying thought bubble says “I choke back vomit as I feel the cool air on my beating heart.”
Wait a Minute!!! How can internal organ has any kind of sensation? arent sensory nerves only present on the skin?
I have heard that internal organs can feel pain. But can they feel any thing else like temperatature? Putting the Intense pain aside for a moment, can surgury patients actually feel the doctor working inside? (provided that he or she is awake )
There is some coverage by the sensory nervous system of the internal organs, but it is not much, a lot less than the skin anyway.
When your liver is aching, it is very difficult to lokalize the pain. I don’t think there are other receptors (like the ones for temperature) in the internal organs.
I would guess that internal organs can feel pain so you know when one is broke or hurt. The brain doesn’t have any, because if your brain is hurt, you are probably dead
Of course internal organs feel pain – ever talk to someone who’s had appendicitis?
If the innards feel “wrong” – pain, hot, cold, whatever – it is signaling the organism (you) that there is something going on that needs attention. If you never got heartburn, for example, you’d never know you ate something that your stomach didn’t like. If your lower intestines had no nerve endings you wouldn’t know, well, you know what you wouldn’t know.
Similarly “burning” lungs – if you didn’t feel this discomfort you might not avoid smoky or excessively hot or cold places. And so on. In the case of the brain, of course, there’s nothing you could do anyway.
In some situations, by the time pain occurs, it’s much too late and nothing can be done even now; it was even less useful in pre-modern times. Prior to the development of anesthesia and clean surgical procedures, surgery on the innards was pretty uncommon. The extreme pain would likely cause shock and the person might not even survive to die of infection anyway.
Lots of deadly internal things are not especially painful: many forms of cancer before the final stages are entirely painless, for example, which is one of the things that makes it so hard to diagnose.
IANAD, but have been told this by one. Abdominal pains “travel” and may be perceived as coming from somewhere quite different from where the actual problem is. One of several reasons why abdominal problems like appendicitis are impossible to diagnose with 100% accuracy.
Internal pains do appear to ‘travel’, because we haven’t had experience locating them. The body doesn’t seem to instinctively know what nerve corresponds to exactly what area. It’s only after being touched continually over many months or years that we ‘learn’ exactly what nerves are connected to what area. Because the pain from internal organs usually travels via the same major nerve trunks as pain receptors on the surface, people initially locate them as being in the skin or muscles. Only after repeated exposure does your brain learn to separate the impulses. Of course most such pain doesn’t occur often enough for this learning to occur. There are some exceptions, and people with inguinal hernias can learn to distinguish the pian from the similar pain of a ‘stitch’, and people with chronic heart congestion can eventually learn to distinguish this pain from the classic referred pain in the left shoulder/arm.
[hijack]Unless the patient was provided artificial aspiration (i.e. not just something to bite on), his lungs would collapse when the chest cavity was opened.
While the brain itself doesn’t have any pain receptors, it is enclosed in a very tight fitting ‘sack’, the meninges. These can and do feel pain, as do various other nerves in the head.
While the brain itself doesn’t have any pain receptors, it is enclosed in a very tight fitting ‘sack’, the meninges. These can and do feel pain, as do various other nerves in the head.
Internal organs do possess the appropriate receptors for temperature or to feel the pain of burning or cutting.
They can detect pain caused by changes in pressure (such as from a blockage caused by a tumour or appendicitis) or pH (acid in the oesophagus causes heart burn).
Although most heart attacks are painful, it is possible to have a completely painless MI.
Think about it…they can cauterise haemorrhoids (burn them) painlessly, but squeezing them is very painful!
So apart from all the other things (collapsed lungs, passing out from the pain and whatnot) “cool” air would not be sensed by the character.
I’m using medical textbooks here, not making a WAG.
Unless the patient was provided artificial aspiration (i.e. not just something to bite on), his lungs would collapse when the chest cavity was opened.
Okay,… guess youre right… I never thought about that…
Why would your lungs collappse when your chest is opened?
Do they tear that easily?
On aq side note… the comic in question is (Todd Mcfarlane’s) Spawn # 124
The murdered cia assassin who sells his soul to return to his wife, only to be sent back 5 years later as a hideous monster, to find his wife happily remarried to his best friend.
PS… He’s also featured in one of the worst movies ever made…
Because you breathe by moving your diaphragm downward, causing the pressure in your chest cavity to be less than that of the surrounding environment. This causes your lungs to inflate. Relaxing the diaphragm causes the pressure to level out, forcing air back out.
With your chest cavity opened up, moving your diaphragm with have no effect on the pressure being felt inside said chest cavity. You lungs would fail to inflate.
IAMAD, so I don’t know if your lungs would actually callapse of not, but you definately would not be able to breathe.