Monday, October 13, 2008

Catamenial Pneumothorax

Say what!? Yes, try say these words five times fast. So, this condition is insane! It was listed on one of my classmates status updates on gchat and man oh man...I am NEVER complaining about having my period again! Women who have catamenial pneumothorax get a collapsed lung usually 72 hours after they start having their monthly menstruation cycle. Seriously? I really have no grounds to complain about the sore back and the cramps...and maybe the fact that I'm bleeding out. Sorry about the visual...but this blog is about medicine and health.

But these women! The incidence of this condition isn't very high, but the fact that they can potentially get a collapsed lung every month is insane! Actually, the cause is endometrial tissue attaching to the pleural space of the lung which then causes the lung to collapse because of an accumulation of blood and endometrium. Endometriosis is a terrible disease wherein the endometrium (tissue within the woman's vaginal walls that is sloughed off every month )grows ectopically at other sites of the body. In this case, there is endometrial tissue in the lungs.

The treatment will probably be an emergency chest tube to drain the fluid accumulation and then probably surgery to take out the ectopic endometrial tissue.

This condition is out of this world crazy.

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