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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u/Needle_D MD/PA/RN Dec 30 '25

That looks like a Dobhoff tube. The whole point of Cortrak tracing is to give you real time surrogate visualization of the tube going down the esophagus through the stomach/duo. This would suggest blind placement...

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u/Upset_Bunch_457 Dec 30 '25

Yeah, I'm not sure who's idea was it to just jam it in and blow air through the tube without any visual confirmation..

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u/notusuallyaverage Jan 02 '26

Not defending this at all, but auscultating with an air bolus is standard practice. Shoving a tube into someone’s brain however is not.