Pulp Fiction and Adrenaline Shots

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So our newest saver-of-lives, kinoons, got me to thinkin’: how realistic was the Pulp Fiction adreneline-to-the-heart scene? I don’t have any medical background, I just watch a lot of ER, but I’d imagine that piercing the heart would cause a lot of problems (ie: you now have a hole in your heart). How unlikely is it that a high John Travola would be able to hit the mark like that?

2

God I hate to admit this but the scenario is plausible. Caveats follow.

  1. Active CPR needs to be going on to circulate the bolus of epinephrine (adrenaline)through the cardiac circulation.

  2. IIRC they used a big-ass needle that probably would have gone through the sternum, throught the heart, and into … the lung or spine. You only need to go in about 2.5 to 3 inches in an adult of the size depicted on the screen.

  3. Could he hit it (the heart)? You bet. It’s right there just slightly left of the sternum. So is the left lung, the aorta and other structures best left un-poked.

  4. And as for that hole in your heart. Not a good place as the space between the heart and the pericardium can quickly fill with blood causing cardiac tamponade. Fatal in most circumstances as the heart can no longer beat against the pressure surrounding it.

  5. Oh yeah, what about the resultant infection as you plunge a needle through dirty skin into the heart muscle? A long course of antibiotics and potential heart valve damage leading to … pick a good HMO.

Any questions class?

3

<hijack>
imdb.com says

</hijack>

4

Having also within the last month ran a code (our cool word for heart attack) I would not highly recommend sticking a needle directly into the heart. We perfer to inject the epi into an IV in either the arm, or a person’s external jugular. The epi does its job from there pretty quickly – we give epi about once every three minutes until we get some sort of electral activity in the heart, or we call the person dead.

On the not so bright side, havent been able to save one of these patients yet. :o(

Kinooning it up for 20 years and counting

5

oh, thankyou for the saver of live complement. :slight_smile:

one of these days I’ll remember to check the smilies legend on the left of my screen here and get the right one. The pervious one was supposed to be a frown. Got to remember to leave the nose out.

Kinooning it up for 20 years and counting