From: Rich Gauszka 

Canadians the first Vulcans? 

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/06/08/health-green-blood.h
tml

Doctors at Vancouver's St. Paul's Hospital came across something highly
illogical when they tried to put an arterial line into a patient about to
undergo surgery: his blood was dark green.

The green blood — reminiscent of the Vulcan blood found in Mr. Spock of
Star Trek fame — came as a bit of a shock to Dr. Alana Flexman and her
colleagues, who report on the unusual case in this week's issue of the
journal The Lancet.

The 42-year-old man was already a bit of a medical departure. He had fallen
asleep while kneeling, and developed compartment syndrome in both legs.

The potentially dangerous condition involves a buildup of pressure in deep
muscle tissue — in this case in the legs — and unless the pressure was
relieved, permanent nerve damage could have been sustained.

As surgical staff prepared the man for the middle-of-the-night emergency
operation, Flexman and a colleague attempted to insert a line into a wrist
artery.

rterial lines are used to monitor blood pressure during an operation; any
blood that flows when the line is inserted into the artery should be vivid
red, the sign it has been oxygenated in the heart.

But in this case, which occurred in October 2005, it was not.

"During insertion, we normally see arterial blood come out. That's how
we know we're in the right place. And normally that blood is bright red, as
you would expect in an artery," Flexman said in an interview Thursday.

"But in his case, the blood kept coming back as dark green instead of
bright red.

"It was sort of a green-black. … Like an avocado skin maybe."

The reaction in the room? "We were very concerned, obviously,"
said Flexman, who is training in anesthesia at the hospital.

Samples were rushed off to the lab, which quickly ruled out a dangerous
condition called methemoglobin, in which the hemoglobin in the blood can't
bind to oxygen.

While the lab worked, so did the operating team. The man came through the
surgery well.

The next day, the lab reported it had detected sulfhemoglobin, a condition
thought to be triggered by some medications.

"It's so rare that we don't have a perfect understanding how it
happens, but some drug donates a sulphur group that binds to the hemoglobin
molecule and prevents it from binding to oxygen," Flexman explains.
"And that gives it the green colour."

She and her colleagues believe the condition may have been brought on by
the man's migraine medication, sumatriptan, which he was taking in
higher-than-advised doses, though they can't prove it.

Green blood can be found in some forms of life such as some marine worms.
But it is a condition normally associated with science fiction and not
medical texts.

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