How dangerous is the smoke choking people? Doctor: The respiratory tract leaves irreversible "sequela"

Black smoke soared into the sky, accompanied by the growth of flames. Although no sparks were seen, hundreds of people were still trapped in such a terrible scene. This is the real scene of the cash box on Linsen North Road in Taipei yesterday. However, according to a senior firefighter, "Although the smoke looks inconspicuous, it is very high, reaching 200-600 degrees, and you can't stand it when you take a sip. But breathing like this may lead to inhalation asphyxia and even burn your airway.

According to the experience of firefighters in the past, smoke often causes more casualties at the scene of the fire than burns and scalds. For example, this till fire claimed 5 lives, 1 life, and 48 people were slightly injured and sent to the hospital. Everyone has the problem of suffocation. Firefighters even said frankly, "The smoke at the scene of the fire is more dangerous and horrible than the flame. 」

Su Yifeng, a chest physician at Yangming Hospital of Taipei United Hospital, pointed out: "Inhaling high-heat gas and smoke from the fire will directly cause respiratory burns. In severe cases, it will cause immediate obstruction and edema of the upper respiratory tract, and it is impossible to inhale air. 」

Even a slight choking injury should not be careless. After ordinary people inhale thick smoke, there will be serious inflammatory reaction in the lungs. Su Yifeng pointed out: "Even a slight choking injury will cause a feeling of breathlessness, and the respiratory tract will also be painful and edematous, such as coughing and dyspnea for two or three weeks, and there will be sequelae like' asthma' that will last for decades. Of course, resilience is also related to age. The older you are, the worse your resilience is. 」

Firefighters enter the fire with thick smoke/Image source: Usually, such patients can be divided into four grades under bronchoscope, and the serious ones are grades 3 and 4, which will cause tracheal swelling and peeling, pulmonary edema and airway obstruction, acute respiratory distress, and more serious sequelae, usually accompanied by chronic lung diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis, airway deformation and obstructive pulmonary disease. Su Yifeng said: "Serious people may never leave the ventilator. What they are most afraid of is that after two weeks, the scab of the respiratory tract falls off and granulation tissue begins to produce, blocking the respiratory tract. At this time, the patient will become very breathless. 」

In addition to high temperature, there is another dangerous factor in smog, because smog contains a lot of toxic substances, and PM 2.5 alone may be 100 times as much as our usual air pollution. Su Yifeng pointed out: "The United States has done research on 965,438+065,438+0 that happened at that time, and firefighters who rescued nearby have checked it. Because they smoked a lot of dust and smoke at that time, it took ten years to find this group of firefighters. In addition, inhaling a lot of smoke is also afraid that these toxic substances will stay in the body, and whether it will be easier to get cancer in the future is also one of the problems. 」

Firefighters reminded that the door must be closed to avoid being choked by smoke in the fire. If the indoor smoke is not too heavy, if it is tolerable, find a safe place to close it and wait for rescue, and take the initiative to call 1 19 to inform the trapped location. Although it may make people panic indoors, inhaling more smoke in unsafe places will make people suffocate easily.