Patient bleeds dark green blood

[Ben]

A team of Canadian surgeons got a shock when the patient they were
operating on began shedding dark greenish-black blood, the Lancet
reports.
The man emulated Star Trek's Mr Spock - the Enterprise's science
officer who supposedly had green Vulcan blood.

In this case, the unusual colour of the 42-year-old's blood was down
to the migraine medication he was taking.

The man's leg surgery went ahead successfully and his blood returned
to normal once he had eased off the drug.

Dark green

The patient had been taking large doses of sumatriptan - 200
milligrams a day.

This had caused a rare condition called sulfhaemoglobinaemia, where
sulphur is incorporated into the oxygen-carrying compound haemoglobin
in red blood cells.

Describing the case in the Lancet, the doctors, led by Dr Alana
Flexman from St Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, wrote: "The patient
recovered uneventfully, and stopped taking sumatriptan after
discharge.

"When seen five weeks after his last dose, he was found to have no
sulfhaemoglobin in his blood."

The man had needed urgent surgery because he had developed a
dangerous condition in his legs after falling asleep in a sitting
position.

The surgeons performed urgent fasciotomies - limb-saving procedures
which involve making surgical incisions to relieve pressure and
swelling caused by the man's condition, known as compartment
syndrome.

In compartment syndrome, the swelling and pressure in a restricted
space limits blood flow and causes localised tissue and nerve damage.

It is commonly caused by trauma, internal bleeding or a wound
dressing or cast being too tight.

According to the science fantasy television series Star Trek, Mr
Spock had green blood because the oxygen-carrying agent in Vulcan
blood includes copper, rather than iron, as is the case in humans.

Mr Spock had a human mother, and Vulcan father, from whom he
inherited his inability to make sense of human emotion, as well as
his green blood.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/h ... 733203.stm