Revelation!
I was thinking about the cadevar I dissected during my first year in med school and I finally realized what conditions she had, based on the gross pathology.
She had a mass on the upper most part of her lung, which grew into shoulder-neck area and completely obliterated her nerves and arteries in that area. That was most likely a Pancoast tumor. Considering that her lungs were also black and enlarged, she was probably a smoker who developed lung cancer.
Besides having enlarged lungs, her heart was also enlarged and she probably had heart failure. Her heart failure could have arisen from left ventricular failure, which would cause blood to back up through the lungs, but with her smoking history I'm sure she had COPD which increased the resistance in the lungs (the vessels in the lungs constrict in times of low oxygen levels to shunt blood away to areas of the lungs with more oxygen), causing her right heart to pump harder to push the blood through her lungs.
If I were in an RPG, I would have just leveled up. lol
She had a mass on the upper most part of her lung, which grew into shoulder-neck area and completely obliterated her nerves and arteries in that area. That was most likely a Pancoast tumor. Considering that her lungs were also black and enlarged, she was probably a smoker who developed lung cancer.
Besides having enlarged lungs, her heart was also enlarged and she probably had heart failure. Her heart failure could have arisen from left ventricular failure, which would cause blood to back up through the lungs, but with her smoking history I'm sure she had COPD which increased the resistance in the lungs (the vessels in the lungs constrict in times of low oxygen levels to shunt blood away to areas of the lungs with more oxygen), causing her right heart to pump harder to push the blood through her lungs.
If I were in an RPG, I would have just leveled up. lol