What might have caused pulmonary embolism in what otherwise appeared to be a lean, healthy looking man of 39?
Is it likely that his riding for long stretches in a cramped truck (without his getting out to walk) have caused a blood clot that traveled to his lungs? Might battle stress have been a contributing cause? Dietary factors? Exposure to dust/sand?
Given that tens of thousands of other coalition personnel in Iraq endured similar conditions yet developed no embolisms, it would seem to point toward something else.
I suffered from the same malady and it turned out I have a blood clotting disorder, so it could be that. When I was diagnosed, they repeatedly asked me if I’d travelled recently (economy class syndrome), so being stuck in the truck could certainly be a contributing factor.
I haven’t read anything about him having any symptoms prior to collapsing. I was fortunate in that I had leg pain so bad that I could barely walk, and the pulmonary emboli didn’t really affect me (read: extreme chest pain) until I was already in the hospital, where I could be watched in the ICU.
I had no clotting disorder, but ended up with a DVT (deep vein thrombosis) in my leg after some leg surgery, when I was forced to be immobile for extended periods. I was 26 years old at the time, and had no other known risk factors (except for being on the Pill - they tell you to go off the Pill if you’re going to have leg surgery or bedridden, but unfortunately I had no advance warning that I was going to shatter my tibia and fibula into tiny shards, or I would have).
I was damn lucky it didn’t travel to my lungs and become a pulmonary embolism, but then I had access to sophisticated ultrasound imaging equipment, so they detected the clot and put me on IV blood thinners in the hospital before things got to that point. With characteristic 20/20 hindsight, my moron HMO doctor, the one who didn’t order the low-tech, cheap test that might have found the thing before they released me the first time from the hospital, said, “Oh well, this stuff happens all the time when people have been immobile for more than a couple of days.” I’d been immobile for over 2 weeks by that point, and the moron damn well knew it. Her thoughtless stupidity could have killed me. (Not that I have any residual anger or anything.)
I ended up at the ER, where Doogie Houser tried to send me home, telling me I tore a muscle (yeah…a rock-hard, purple, splotchy, cold leg is the result of a torn muscle). Luckily for me, I used to do a low-tech test for DVT (IPG - impedance phlebography), so I knew on the way to the hospital exactly what it was and refused to be discharged.
Glad to hear yours never got to your lungs. I actually ended up with bilateral pulmonary infarctions as a result of the emboli. Guess I’m lucky to be alive.
Well, luckily for me I had a very sharp-eyed physical therapist come to evaluate me at home the day after I was released from the hospital the first time…I asked her why my knee was a bit sore, as they hadn’t done anything to my knee (the surgery was mostly a couple of inches above the ankle). No inflammation or warmth, but she called my doc anyway…since the GP wasn’t available, she called the ortho guy instead. He at least had a brain and sent me in for a venous Doppler, which found a honkin’ huge clot in the femoral artery, right by my hip joint. They readmitted me straight from the imaging lab and pumped me full of Coumadin for the next 4 days. (My ortho doc was about the age of Doogie Howser, but he was pretty cool.)
Too bad there are probably no diagnostic imaging machines in the field, eh? Wonder if poor Bloom knew what hit him, or if he was just feeling run-down one minute and was dead the next. I guess we may never know.
So is it correct to refer to it as a “death from natural causes”? I’ve heard David Bloom’s death referred to as such. I know they just wanted to emphasize that he wasn’t shot by the Iraqis but it doesn’t sound correct given the info in this thread.
Immobility can certainly cause PE. Other risk factors include cancer, pregnancy, trauma, hormone replacement/birth control use, smoking, blood group A (!!), old age, surgery, clotting disorder, infection and family history.
:eek: How about “second hand” smoke? Maybe we should all use a low dose of aspirin a day? Should the soldiers take an aspirin a day if they are in cramped conditions?
Do we really want our soldiers to have blood that doesn’t clot quite so readily as they head into battle? In the risk/benefit analysis of this one, I’d have to say they’d be better off skipping the aspirin and pumping their feet periodically. No hard data, just a gut feeling.
Does anyone else have a bad feeling about Bloom’s death. I don’t want to spark something that shouldn’t light but, there are military doc’s crawling all over the place, and if he felt bad, why didn’t he ask one of them? He seemed quite healthy, and at his pre-deployment physical, they should have picked that up.
Maybe I’m too skeptical.
I feel so bad for his family he leaves behind three daughters and a wife.
That’s interesting… My former boss was in the infantry and he said it was standard procedure for them to take aspirin (6-8/day) while in the field. He never really gave any specific reason…
Pulmonary embolism can.d strike quickly and be fatal in seconds. It can affect even the healthy, especially if they’re immobilized a lot of the time, and dehydrated. It makes sense, IMHO.
:eek: This whole thread has me kinda freaked out. Is PE something that I should worry about. I’m not usually a worrier, but being struck down with no warning is a bit tough to take. This weekend, I did a lot of yard work and my legs are sore from the strain. Should I worry about keeling over?
Yard work is good, drum. The problem is leg inactivity, not leg activity. sitting still for 12 hours on a trans-oceanic flight, or in the back of a jeep for hours crossing the desert and getting dehydrated, thickening the blood are the problems.
If you’re subjected to lengthy sitting, just exercise your legs periodically. Pump imaginary accelerators and brakes with both feet. Stand up and do an interpretive dance demonstrating your feelings about your current lot in life and the world situation. Twirl. Take up Irish Dance. You’ll do fine. (your legs will do fine. I don’t know how taking up Irish Dance will affect your life)
Well, I just heard from my aunt, and apparently my cousin who is embedded with the 3rd Infantry had been close both with David Bloom and Michael Kelly, and is extremely bummed about the whole thing.
So basically I should tell him to drink lots of water and wiggle his ankles? Maybe there is something to the whole Jewish mother/chicken soup thing, then…
The Answer, excerpted from Business Week:
FATAL POSITION?
[snip, snip]
On the night before his death, Bloom was already planning how to celebrate his team’s performance after the war. He had phoned ahead to London to try to book rooms at the Metropolitan hotel in the Mayfair district and a table at Ivy’s restaurant.
Tragically, it may have been the long hours he spent cramped in the Army vehicle that caused his death. Three days ago, Bloom had complained of cramps behind his knee. Like most of us journalists “embedded” in the Army, he had endured days and nights of working, eating, and sleeping in our vehicles as convoys snaked their way toward Baghdad.
He consulted military doctors and described his symptoms over the phone to overseas physicians. They suspected DVT, or deep veinous thrombosis, and advised him to seek proper medical attention. He ignored their advice, swallowed some aspirins, and kept on working. On Sunday he died of a pulmonary embolism.
HANDLED WITH TLC. I learned these medical details from Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Valentine, who many times already during this war had briefed me on the circumstances of deaths surrounding the soldiers whose bodies had been brought to our division for evacuation. But this one felt different. A fellow reporter, a father of three, a husband who just moments before collapsing on Sunday morning, had finished speaking to his wife on the phone…
