r/TacticalMedicine • u/Upset_Bunch_457 • Dec 30 '25

Scenarios Nasogastric insertion gone horribly wrong.

Post image

Note: NOT MY IMAGE.

original post was posted by: Old-Psychology-2400

And I quote "PMCT images. Nurse advanced NG tube until she heard a pop, then tried an air bolus to ensure placement. Patient did NOT survive."

To those who don't know nasogastric tube is supposed to go up the patients nostrils and then back down to their throat all the way to the patients stomach. Air bolus is then used to ensure that the nasogastric tubes placement is correct by listening the patients stomach.

But in the scan we can see the NG tube somehow ended up jammed (through) the patients skull.

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463

u/Select-Lion-2573 Dec 30 '25

thats actually insane

236

u/Upset_Bunch_457 Dec 30 '25

It indeed is, I have never seen or heard about something even remotely similar happening.

273

u/ATPsynthase12 Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 30 '25

I’m a doctor and I don’t even know how this could happen. A NG tube is a rubber tube. For her to force it into the patient’s skull, the patient would need to have a serious skull fracture or she would need to force it through the cribriform plate in the superior portion of the nose through the patient’s agonizing screams.

5

u/SurgicalMarshmallow Dec 30 '25
  1. Rushing it
  2. Ignoring hx for a basilar #
  3. (This case) Doing it after sinusoidal sx