If you were aspiring to publish the most important research paper ever, we have bad news. The bar was just raised by Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin of Detroit Medical Center in Michigan. Their paper is titled, “Nasal Packing With Strips of Cured Pork as Treatment for Uncontrollable Epistaxis in a Patient With Glanzmann Thrombasthenia”, and yes, they convinced a very young test subject with a bleeding disorder to jam bacon up her nose to stop a nosebleed. We must know how that informed consent interview went down. “Hey, yeah, we’re gonna shove this bacon up your 4-year-old daughter’s nose. Sign this waiver. FOR SCIENCE.”
It turns out this wasn’t the first time cured pork was used as a nosebleed treatment, as The Guardian gives a good round-up of other cured-pork-based curatives that fell out of favor due to the bacterial and parasitic infection risks which accompany jamming meat up your nose (You don’t say?). In this most recent study — and hopefully this sentence won’t be taken out of context and land me on a watch list — researchers gave the pork treatment to a 4 year old. The child has Glanzmann thrombasthenia, a platelet function disorder which can cause the afflicted to bleed to death (especially from nosebleeds). I’ll let the researchers describe their own results:
Cured salted pork crafted as a nasal tampon and packed within the nasal vaults successfully stopped nasal hemorrhage promptly, effectively, and without sequelae. In both applications, the patient had complete cessation of nasal bleeding within 24 hours, and was discharged within 72 hours after treatment. [Annals]
“Cured salt pork crafted as a nasal tampon” is the best start to a sentence ever ever ever. The fact that it actually worked is just a nice bonus.
[Image credit: The Frogman]