Doctors recently reported the case of a 56-year-old patient who experienced chest pain and breathing difficulties because of a piece of cement that had pierced his heart and lung.
So how does one get cement stuck inside their heart? Well, in this particular case it was as a direct consequence of a procedure that the patient had undergone a week earlier. Doctors had treated what is known as a “vertebral compression fracture,” a painful condition in which part of a vertebra collapses into itself, most commonly as a result of osteoporosis. They had performed kyphoplasty, a procedure in which a special type of cement is injected into the vertebra to restore its normal height and keep it from collapsing further. Only in this case, the cement didn’t stay in the bone…
