When someone is shot in the lung, what exactly happens? Does the lung fill up with blood, is the person still able to breathe with the other lung, what if both lungs are shot? And when they die does it feel like they are drowning, or is is it less painful then that?
I have seen a few animals die from arrow wounds to the lungs. One lung can be a very slow death or even possible survival. 2 lungs death usually occurs in under a minute, well at least unconsiousness. You will usally here a gasp and then blood will spurt out the mouth. Most hunters I have talked to report the animal down in less than a 100 yards at a dead run. ( this is less than 10 seconds for a deer)
I asked my cardiologist what it feels like to die of a heart attack He said the brain gets deprived of oxygen, and you go into a coma quite quickly. Without resuscitation, you die without recovering consciousness. Having your lungs rendered non-functional would have a similar result, no more oxygen reached the brain, and coma sets in quickly.
One would experience the panic for a short time, aware that there is no oxygen replacement, but physical pain would be limited to the trauma causing the organ to be disabled.
An isolated lung injury from a gun shot wound would likely result in a tension pneumothorax in which air leaks out of the lung with each breath building up pressure in the chest cavity and collapsing the lung. Given enough pressure the lung will collapse completely and you’ll be oxygenating out of one side only. Sometimes even more pressure builds up and actually can begin to push the heart and trachea over to the other side as well as making it difficult for blood to return to the heart (due to pressure differential). The combination of low oxygen and low BP can be deadly if not corrected quickly.
I have never died from a gunshot wound to the lung so I am unfortunately in no position to state what it factually feels like.
I did see an episode of Doc Martin on PBS where Doctor Martin Ellingham had to create an airway into the thoracic cavity in order to release pressure so that another character on the show could breathe. I do not recall whether a gunshot was involved or not. I do think that the medical situations presented on this admittedly fictional show are reviewed by medical professionals, so there is that.
As for what it appeared the character in the situation was feeling, there seemed to be a lot of gasping. So, at least a certain amount of gasping type of feeling, then.
If you were to strangle someone to death they would be unconscious in less then a minute but it would be very painful, I am asking because I have heard various accounts from war veterans and from war documentaries who say that the lungs fill with blood, you struggle to breath but can’t and feel the sense of painful “air deprivation” that you get when you hold your breathe and it feels like drowning, just wondering how accurate this is.
I would take the war veterans’ word for it. It is most likely a hideous experience. Do you have any reason to doubt it?
I’ve never died from a gunshot wound to the lung either, but I have stopped breathing from an asthma attack.
You don’t really have time to think or even be afraid, once your lung isn’t working or you can’t get air in you’re passed out in less than 30-60 seconds.
I told someone don’t worry I can handle this and everything went black, woke up in the ER after an injection unaware of how much time had passed or where I was. They said I said that and my head drooped to the side my tongue hung out a little and I started turning blue.
The thoracic cavity of humans has a thin layer of tissue that seperates the lungs. So, unlike deer or similar animals, we can still breath with a hole in one lung. Without the seperating tissue, the hole on one side of the chest would compromise both lungs. If the hole is only on one side of the chest, and it is sufficiently large, the victim should be fine. He can breath with just the one lung all the way to the hospital. He will get patched up and his lung will heal. If the hole is about the size of a quarter or smaller, there is the potential of developing a tension pneumothorax. When the diaphram sucks air into the lungs, it will also suck air into the hole. When the hole is too small, it may prevent the air from escaping through the hole when the person exhales. As the person continues to breath, more air is sucked in and trapped. This puts pressure on the lung, and it can no longer inflate. As more air is sucked in, more pressure is created on that side of the chest. The air continues to get pumped into that cavity and trapped in there. As that side of the chest expands, it puts pressure on the heart and the other lung. It gets successively harder and harder to breath. It is a long slow, panicy process. There is actually a quick and easy fix to this situation called a needle thoracostomy, also called a needle decompression in the military. Sticking a large guage needle into the effected side of the chest, between the 2nd and 3rd rib above the nipple will allow the trapped air to escape, thereby relieving the pressure on the heart and other lung. The victim will then be able to breath easily. The procedure may have to be done several times before getting to a hospital. Every Soldier in the Army is taught this procedure. It is first aid in the Army.
If a person is getting no air at all, he/she would likely pass out in that short amount of time. Unfortunately, one can still breath with a hole in the chest, so they don’t pass out that fast, if at all.
If they die from a pneumothorax do they throw up first? I was put in a choke hold during a grappling session during a jujitsu class, they had their arm so it was a air choke, not a blood choke, I wanted to see if I could hold out but the “air panic” was incredible, I could not take a breathe at all, and then after about 10 seconds my body started to throw up to try to “clear the blockage” ( I assume my body though I was choking on food) at that point I tapped out.
Been there, done that, and it did not look pleasant*. Imagine breathing through a straw that keeps getting smaller, eventually you’re recruiting every single muscle in your torso and you’re still drowning slowly.
I much rather the bullet tore one of my major pulmonary arteries.
*Of course, when you sink the chest tube in time, and the rush of air blows your hair back and the patient turns from blueberry to strawberry, its boner city.
I hope you weren’t wearing scubs!
Better to be wearing scrubs than no pants whatsoever!
Hey, man, I gotta let my freak flag fly!
Seriously, though, working in an emergency room has a lot to be said against it, but every so often you get to pluck somebody up out of an open grave, and that is pretty damn cool.
Just wanted to mention that the movie Three Kings (1999) features this situation happening to one of the characters, as a significant plot point.
I was thinking of the line in the OP about both lungs shot, so you’re saying a lung with a hole in it can still function?
Yes. At least partial function. Don’t think of the lung as a balloon that rapidly deflates and goes limp when you poke a little hole in it. The lungs are more like meaty sponges on the inside, not hollow balloons. Or like a large marshmellow, even. Depending on the size and extent of the hole, the lung could even still inflate with a hole in it. Air will not exit that hole faster than it enters the rest of the lung, so there is still some function.
When you hear someone talk about a “collapsed lung”, don’t image a balloon going limp. The collapsed lung is not caused by the fact that there is a hole in it. A lung with no air in it at all is still pretty large and solid looking–not limp like an empty balloon. It doesn’t need air in it to hold its shape, and it doesn’t collapse because there is no longer air inside to make it full. Instead, it collapses because it is being squeezed by the blood or air that is getting trapped between the chest wall and the lung itself. Imagine someone squeezing that meaty sponge. When the pressure inside the chest cavity is released, the lung will actually return to its normal size. Squeeze a marshmellow in your hand. That is the collapsed lung. When you release the marshmellow, it returns to the original size because it has some integrity to its shape. Just like the lung. So it really isn’t collapsing in the traditional sense, it is being squeezed.
This same pressure from the blood or air filling the chest cavity will be putting a lot of pressure on the heart as well. This is a bigger concern than the hole in the lung. If the pressure is managed, if a tension pneumothorax is prevented or never develops, the lung could probably even heal on its own. I imagine plenty of people survived arrows to the chest back in the day. A Soldier would rather be shot through a lung than through the abdomen.
Here is a section of the lung showing what I’m talking about. See how solid it is on the inside. http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/projects/lgcardiac/normal_cases/equine_normals/images/post/lung_section.jpg
