INDEPTH: HEALTH
Smoke inhalation
CBC News Online | October 08, 2004
Many news stories covering a fire often end with a line such as "12 people were treated for smoke inhalation."
The implication is that their injuries weren't very serious, but, in fact, smoke inhalation can be very tricky to treat and kills more people after a fire than burns do.
When a fire burns, it releases searing hot gases and, especially if plastics or synthetic fabrics are burning, hundreds of toxic chemicals. The chemicals can damage the delicate tissues in the lungs where the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide takes place.
But the initial damage is only half of the threat. Even a seemingly mild case of smoke inhalation, with symptoms as innocuous as a cough, can turn deadly hours or even days later.
Whenever damage occurs in the body, immune-system cells rush to the site to help repair it. This causes inflammation and, in the case of the lungs, can make a bad situation worse.
"When you get this inflammation building up, fluid develops, just like if you have a burn, you get fluid developing in a blister," says London lung specialist Dr. John Moore-Gillan.
In the first hours after a fire, even a chest X-ray or blood oxygen levels can appear normal, but the patient's lungs can fill up with fluid a day or more later.
The usual treatment for smoke inhalation in a hospital emergency room is observation and oxygen treatment. If a patient does go into respiratory failure, doctors can hook him up to a ventilator, a machine that can breathe for the patient.
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