Buzz
Reader Erica was curious after a persistent coughing fit: Is it possible for someone to actually "cough up a lung"?
Nope. Luckily, your lungs are simply too big to pass through your windpipe, so they won't come flying out of your mouth. However, they don’t always stay exactly where they’re supposed to, as two British doctors revealed in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In their case report, the doctors shared the story of a middle-aged woman from Birmingham, UK, who had been dealing with chest pain for a few days. She drove herself to the hospital to get it checked out, explaining to the doctors that she had asthma and had been coughing intensely for several weeks before the pain began.
During the examination, the doctors listened to her chest and detected some popping sounds on the right side. An X-ray and CT scan uncovered the cause of the pain and the strange noises. The woman had coughed so intensely that she caused her right lung to herniate, pushing it not up, but out through the space between her two lowest ribs. You can view the images here.
This isn't even the most extreme or unsettling outcome from coughing. That title likely goes to a condition known as intermittent exophthalmos, a term doctors use when someone’s eye bulges out of its socket.
