Heart patient coughs up intact cast of bronchial tree - photo

[Jon]

This one is making the viral rounds, accompanied by dubious "man coughs up lung" descriptions.

Last week, The New England Journal of Medicine stepped in to set the record straight: it's real, and it's a coughed-up cast of a bronchial tree, from a 36-year old man with chronic heart failure. Kinda like a blood clot.

During an extreme bout of coughing, the patient spontaneously expectorated an intact cast of the right bronchial tree. The right bronchial tree consists of three segmental branches in the upper lobe (blue arrows), two segmental branches in the middle lobe (white arrows), and five segmental branches in the lower lobe (black arrows).

More: New England Journal of Medicine - Cast of the Right Bronchial Tree