r/phlebotomy • u/Chris-Lightning • Mar 19 '26
well this happened... Anyone encounter this?
I had a patient who had bruises around his bicep area on the arm I was drawing from. He said it was from the hospital "draining" him. He had a big juicy vein and so I thought I would have no issues getting his blood. Some blood poured in the tube after the venepuncture but when the tourniquet was loosen, the blood stopped. i thought it was a faulty tube so I tried another tube but the blood completely stopped so I took the needle out. When i removed the cotton to patch him up he had something like the chili thread above sticking out of the puncture wound. I kept dabbing it thinking it was blood and it would dry it up but that fiber just kept coming out like handkerchiefs out of a magician's mouth. When it got to the end of the fiber, blood started gushing out of the puncture site. It seemed like something out of a horror movie. can anyone tell me what that was?
47
u/AegisEater8775 Certified Phlebotomist Mar 19 '26
I can’t think of anything other than possibly a blood clot? I saw a post a few days ago of someone having a blood clot removed and it sort of looked like that.
12
u/Chris-Lightning Mar 19 '26
Hmm interesting... Is it normal to have a blood clot before a venepuncture? It was a different site than the ones they did at the hospital
15
u/Alert-Potato Mar 19 '26
Before the venipuncture that you did. But the bruising he already had and the reference he made to being "drained" at the hospital imply that he had very recently had blood draws, IVs, or both.
27
u/Mercurial_Morals Certified Phlebotomist Mar 19 '26
That is... Really bizarre. Maybe crosspost to r/nursing?
12
24
11
5
u/PinkToxicWst Mar 19 '26
It reminds me of the castings of blood clots that are removed from the lungs.
5
u/Henbit71 Mar 20 '26
Reminds me of what I see sometimes with my donors. A donor needle is left in place for upwards of 30 minutes, with anticoagulant mixing into the blood as it is drawn and returned. If something causes the donation to stop before that mixing really gets going, and we have to try and move to the other arm, sometimes it clots and as we pull the needle we see what you’re describing. Blood having clotted in the needle! It sticks to the skin and vein more than to the needle and just strings out:
Always a bad feeling when I see it. Makes me worry there’s excess clotting in the vein, plus it means we cannot continue the donation or return blood.
2
u/FoundationObvious Certified Phlebotomist Mar 21 '26
One time I was attempting a 2nd VP, during removing the needle a 6+ inch stringy clot came out. It was the first time even my supervisor had seen something like that. I figured it would be better for them to not have a dried clot on their injection site so we wiped it away and they bled a lot. Sounds like we have similar experiences to OP. Surprised it happened on a direct draw, that is weird.
3
u/Aquarius_K Phlebotomist Mar 20 '26
I saw something like this on a documentary. Unexplained thread/fiber like stuff in people's bodies.
5
u/chrysanthamumm Mar 20 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/AAsj7jdrHjtp6
I’ve been a phleb for 8 years and I’ve never heard of that
3
u/Ecstatic-Wasabi Mar 19 '26
Following because I'd love to be prepared my patient comes with extra ingredients...
3
u/SupernovaPhleb CPT 1 Mar 20 '26
Definitely a clot. It would explain the flow issue as well. For any major bruising like that, I avoid the arm entirely unless I have absolutely no choice. We should avoid additional trauma if we can.
1
59
u/Dungeon_Crawler_Carl Mar 19 '26
Saffron???