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A man’s chest pain had an unusual cause – there was a 4-inch lump of cement in his heart, which had traveled into his bloodstream after a medical procedure, according to a new report.
The 56-year-old man went to the emergency room after experiencing chest pain and difficulty breathing for two days, according to a report from researchers at Yale University School of Medicine, published on Saturday October 2 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
A week earlier, the man had suffered a spinal procedure to treat a broken vertebra or what doctors call a ‘spinal compression fracture’, a very painful condition in which part of a bone in the spine (vertebra) collapses on itself, often at the Following osteoporosis or bone weakening, depending on the National Institutes of Health. The man had undergone kyphoplasty, a procedure in which doctors inject a special type of cement into the vertebra to restore its proper height and prevent it from collapsing, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Kyphoplasty is generally considered safe – less than 2% of people undergoing the procedure have a complication, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. But a possible risk is that the cement will leak from the bone to other areas, which can cause a blockage or “embolism” of a blood vessel.
This is what happened in the case of the man – the cement escaped from the bone in his veins, where it hardened and embolized, traveling to his heart, said the authors.
In the emergency room, the man underwent an x-ray and a CT scan, which showed a foreign body in his heart. The man suffered an emergency heart surgery, in which doctors found a thin, sharp piece of cement that had torn the upper right chamber of his heart and punctured his right lung, according to the report.
They removed the cement embolism, which was 4 inches (10.1 centimeters) long. Doctors then repaired the tear in his heart. The man had no complications from the operation and a month later he was almost fully recovered, according to the report.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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