Chapter 290: 【290】Additional update 2 Chapter 290: 【290】Additional update 2 “`
Why would the nurse trust her intern classmate’s judgment? Li Qi’an’s head was a bit blown, and he couldn’t understand it.
“Has the doctor come down yet?”
“They said he’s coming, he’s coming—”
“I urged him, I made several phone calls!! Urged them as if it were a matter of life and death—”
“Where’s Doctor Kim?!”
“Someone said Doctor Kim is over there; I ran to find her—”
Beep beep beep, beep beep beep, the heart monitor started emitting a continuous alarm sound.
Mother Ah Tao, who was holding Luo Yanfen’s hand, looked up: “What’s happening, what’s that sound? Yan Fen?!”
Luo Yanfen, eyes on the red alert of the heart monitor, cried out in urgent desperation: “Let me go, Auntie!”
“I won’t let you go, save your uncle, please save him—”
“No, if you don’t let go of me, how can I save anyone!!”
“My husband, please save him—” This woman must have been scared out of her wits, clinging desperately to her legs! Luo Yanfen couldn’t break free and the lines on the monitor were getting increasingly abnormal. Her complexion turned pale and then ashen: Was this it? Were they done for?!
Unclear about what the problem was, the nurse by the patient’s bedside and Li Qi’an turned back to look at the monitor: “What’s the matter? Did the patient’s heartbeat stop suddenly?”
“Has the heartbeat stopped?”
“Start chest compressions—”
“Bring the defibrillator—”
Xie Wanying’s hands quickly touched the patient’s pulse: “No, it’s a pulsus paradoxus—”
“Yingying, what do you mean by that?” Li Qi’an, hearing her voice, turned back to look at her as the nurses went to pull the defibrillator.
“No, no, what we need to do now is a puncture!” shouted Xie Wanying. “There’s no time to lose—”
The defibrillator brought by the nurse was pushed aside by her. She dashed to the treatment cart, opened a drawer at the bottom with a snap, and took out a 5 ml disposable syringe. She tore open the packaging, removed the needle cap.
On the treatment tray on the cart were the pericardiocentesis supplies prepared halfway at her instruction—sterile wrapped disposable puncture needles. Tearing off the wrapping, she took out the puncture needle, fitted it onto the syringe without a needle, pulled the plunger back a little, and used her little finger and ring finger to hold a sterilized cotton ball.
People around her were stunned by her series of rapid, whirlwind-like actions.
With a hiss, she pulled open the upper half of the patient’s clothing; her fingers swiftly found the spot below the junction of the left costal margin and the xiphoid process, about 2 centimeters down, and rubbed the area with the sterilized cotton ball quickly.
In her mind flashed the words from some medical paper, stating that if the patient was unable to sit or be in a half-sitting position due to an unclear consciousness and could only lay flat, the needle must be inserted at a very small angle, even less than the thirty degrees taught in textbooks—down to half of that.
Organizing her thoughts, Xie Wanying’s eyes locked onto the patient’s chest, picturing the patient’s wildly beating heart being pressed by the fluid in the pericardium, nearly suffocating. The patient’s condition matched the principle of the previous tension pneumothorax patient who was nearly suffocating. The respiratory and cardiovascular organs were being oppressed by fluid or gas, on the verge of halting physiological activities.
If the pressure wasn’t relieved quickly, the patient’s organs would be suppressed to death.
There really was no time left; the heart rate on the monitor was trembling.
Insert! Insert the needle slowly; at such a time, rushing was not an option, accuracy was key. The needle had to be inserted at a 15 to 20-degree angle from the abdominal wall, and for a thin patient, a depth of three to five centimeters was usually enough. However, everything depended on the feel after the needle entered.