Chapter 1770: 1709 Liver Foreign Body Without Trauma History

"Boss, what did you find?" After leaving the ICU, Su Yun asked.

"I suspect the ventilator was misinserted, too much gas was blown into the stomach via the ventilator, finally causing a series of reactions." Zheng Ren said.

"It makes some sense and can also explain it, but there are too few cases, so it lacks statistical significance." Su Yun understood immediately, shrugged, and said.

Zheng Ren smiled; he just didn't have time, but if he settled down to study, he could produce a paper in a few days.

But papers mean nothing to him; he's already a lifelong professor at Massachusetts General Hospital, still publishing a worthless paper.

That's all work that Quan Xiaocao should be doing.

As for himself, the progress bar of the task "Fame Under Heaven" is what matters.

"What are you doing this afternoon?" Su Yun asked.

"I don't know." Zheng Ren said: "Maybe I'll sit and read a bit, maybe I'll go stroll around the Emergency Department."

"Boss, let me tell you a secret." Su Yun's eyes narrowed.

"……" Zheng Ren's heart jolted; although he didn't look at Su Yun, he knew what he wanted to say in his heart.

With that tone, that damn guy is definitely going to say Ning Shu is coming back right away.

All of Zheng Ren's good mood went up in smoke.

【They said to quickly write a love song……】

Su Yun hadn't spoken yet when Zheng Ren's phone rang.

"Hello, Director Luo."

"I'm in the ICU, just came out."

"Alright, I'll go check the situation right away." Zheng Ren said, then hung up.

"What's wrong? Emergency?"

"No, they said they admitted a patient with a liver abscess, which looks especially strange." Zheng Ren said.

"What's there to see about a liver abscess?" Su Yun said, "Just anti-inflammatory symptomatic treatment; if that fails, do ultrasound-guided percutaneous drainage—there's always a suitable method."

"How could Director Luo not know what you're saying? He said he suspects there's a problem, so it must be something else." Zheng Ren said, quickening his pace.

The two hurried to Xiao Hua Nei Ke; Zheng Ren glanced in and saw Director Luo wasn't in the doctors' office, so he headed straight for the director's office.

He knocked, and Director Luo's voice came from inside; Zheng Ren pushed the door and entered.

"Zheng Lao Ban, come look at this image." Director Luo glanced at Zheng Ren, then turned his eyes back to the film on the viewer.

Zheng Ren walked over and took a look. In the right lobe of the liver, a 7×3 cm abscess could be seen, elongated in shape, bulging from the liver surface.

"Uh…… what the hell is this?"

If it were a trauma patient, Zheng Ren wouldn't hesitate. But the image seen in Xiao Hua Nei Ke, logically, should be an internal medicine disease.

But the high-density solidity—what is it? Liver stones? It's too large and too thin; it doesn't look like that.

"Zheng Lao Ban? What do you think this is?" Director Luo asked.

"Does the patient have a history of trauma?" Zheng Ren asked directly.

"No, the strangeness lies right here." Director Luo said: "The patient claims no history of trauma or surgery."

The patient is a 41-year-old male who developed unexplained fever a month ago, initially thought it was a cold or fever, visited a local clinic. After two weeks of intravenous antibiotics with no improvement, he went to the county hospital. When a chest X-ray was taken, a liver abscess was found, so this plain CT scan was performed.

"Is the medical history really that simple?" Zheng Ren narrowed his eyes at the liver CT scan; he had already determined it was a foreign body.

But the patient has no surgical or trauma history—how did the foreign body get in? Did it teleport in, or was it placed by a higher-dimensional being?

This is downright bizarre.

"No matter how I look at it, I feel it's a foreign body." Director Luo stared at the image, "Today in the outpatient clinic, seeing the patient's image, I've been thinking that all along. I dare not be certain, so I asked Zheng Lao Ban to take a look."

"Director Luo, I dare not, I dare not." Zheng Ren repeatedly politely said: "I also think it's a foreign body, and a rather sharp one. But the lack of trauma history makes it strange; can you be certain?"

When discussing the condition, Zheng Ren dropped the pretense and asked very directly.

"To confirm this, I examined the patient's chest and abdominal skin—no breaks, no surgical scars. I also checked around the navel; there's been no single-port laparoscopy." Director Luo said.

Zheng Ren began to hesitate.

Director Luo's experience is indeed rich; everything Zheng Ren could think of, he had already considered.

Even to rule out the patient's unclear description or forgotten medical history, he directly excluded those possibilities during the physical exam.

No trauma, yet a foreign body—this is just too strange.

A single abdominal plain CT scan can't explain the issue; Zheng Ren began to frown, ponder, and started a 3D reconstruction.

However, the result of the 3D reconstruction was definite: judging from the density inside the abscess, it is a sharp, slightly hard object.

The density isn't as high as iron's, and it's certainly not something like a bullet.

Could it really be something that grew on the liver itself?

Zheng Ren began searching for information on liver stones and the like.

Clinically, liver stones are what are called intrahepatic stones, meaning there are stones in the liver's bile ducts, or possibly purely primary intrahepatic stones.

But the most common possibility is caused by common bile duct stones migrating upward and accumulating.

But that doesn't make sense—liver stones… stones aren't that sharp and slender, like a stone forest's intrahepatic stones?

Piercing the bile ducts, protruding from the liver surface, finally causing a severe abscess?

Zheng Ren considered this possibility virtually nonexistent.

After reading so many papers, journals, and magazines, he had never seen a case where stones accumulated in the intrahepatic bile ducts formed sharp, needle-like spikes that pierced the liver.

"Any ideas, Zheng Lao Ban?" Director Luo asked.

"I have no ideas at all, but analyzing the patient's condition, I think it's necessary to conduct an exploratory surgery." Zheng Ren, arms crossed, looked at the image and said firmly.

"Hmm, I called you here for exactly this purpose." Director Luo didn't hide it, speaking directly: "Let's find out what the foreign object really is, and how confident are we about the surgery?"

"The surgery is minor, but we need to cut open, or remove the foreign object under laparoscopy to know what it really is." Zheng Ren said.

Director Luo laughed.

What Zheng Ren answered and what I asked were basically two different things.

I asked him how confident he was about the Shou Bing, while Zheng Lao Ban's entire attention was on what the foreign object inside the patient actually was.

Whether the Shou Bing would fail, Zheng Lao Ban probably hasn't considered it.

Perhaps for Zheng Lao Ban, for a Shou Bing of this difficulty, success is normal; failure is only an extremely rare situation.

It isn't even being considered at the moment.

He's really a vibrant and full of confidence young man! Director Luo looked at Zheng Ren and smiled, saying: "I'll send you the patient's phone number; I won't worry about the rest. If you want to do the Shou Bing or a livestream, just let me know in advance, and I'll come up to have a look."