+1 to that!
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in layman’s terms, high pressure oxygenated blood pushes from the heart out to your extremities through arteries that split and branch and get smaller as they go… so a chip pushed into an artery would cause a lot of bleeding due to the high blood pressure in arteries, and it would only move out toward your extremities until the vessel became too small and it would get lodged.
Veins do the opposite and carry “used” unoxygenated blood from tiny little vessels at the extremedies back to the heart through a series of connecting branches that get bigger and bigger as they approach the heart. Once through the heart though it’s off to the lungs for reoxygenation, where once again we see branching and things getting smaller and smaller. The thing about veins though is that the heart is a great pump but not a great vacuum, so venous blood is lower pressure and its movement is helped along by internal one way valves and surrounding muscle action. This is why you’re told to flex and squeeze your hands when “looking for a vein”… because tying off your arm and flexing will push blood toward your heart, and with nowhere to go it will build pressure in between all the one-way valves inside your veins… and everything just bulges from the pressure… but anyway… because of this low pressure situation and the direction of flow back to the heart, the only way for the chip to go from the hand to the lung would be through a vein.
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No probs! Feel free to name drop, always happy to chat or chime in.
It certainly was an interesting read and not a plausible risk factor that I had considered. I enjoyed the link to the migrating hormone implants too!
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Nice explanation, its this lack of “suck”, the presence of valves as well as the lumen of the veins that leads me to find a case like this hard to fathom!
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we will see how it turns out… perhaps a proper medical write-up will appear an a journal.
The pulmonary vein carries oxygenated blood. Sorry, I had to be pedantic 
I once had an exam in anatomy and me answering “veins carry oxygenated blood” made the professor just unbelievably angry, he went absolutely apeshit and he threw me out, the pompous prick. So I try to save others the emberassment 
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OK OK
Veins with the exception of the pulmonary veins carry deoxygenated blood
Arteries with the exception of the pulmonary arteries carry oxygenated blood.
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Going to heart = vein
Going away from heart = artery
is how I think about it.
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I’m not a doctor, but the one definition I remember from biology classes at school is: high pressure + stiff walled = arteries, low-pressure + soft walled = veins.
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Low pressure + stiff walls = heroin addict?
I personally feel this varies person to person. I’ve had to try and find veins on people, and they all had a pulse.
On the flip side, I cannulated some radial arteries that were extremely deep and I has to use ultrasound.
Because every good ghost story ends with "and some say he’s still out/in there… to this day… "
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Ha! No such thing as pedantic in medicine and yes you are right!
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I find that the variation for cannulating / phlebotomy is more about size of the superficial veins vs adiposity of the patient, the underlying anatomy doesn’t change that much. With regard to arteries they are pretty much always in the same spot no matter the size and I’ve stuck some big fucking needles into some groins when I needed that femoral stab.
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So @greydoc,
Super cliff notes, and general guess because we only know so much that can be validated
Does the idea of a 2mm vein obstruction in your lungs being “asymptotic” sound ballpark possible?
I just can’t wrap my head around something that large not causing issues
Much riskier to try to remove it I bet.
Ok literally just a thought experiment
Absolutely do not want and do not do, literally makes my skin crawl to imagine something inhaled into your lung
But just curious, does the glass or bio goo, used to make things biocompatible
Does that compatibility change if it’s inside the “air part” of the lung… I have no idea the medical term
Versus inside your flesh like inside a vein or under the Dermis?
Or would that still cause an infection or badness somehow?
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Might depend a lot on what part of the world you live in, but for me, this thread currently is having its first anniversary!
Soooo…
For this thread, Pilgrim who started it, and this insane community! 
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My baby is having a birthday
A perfect unicorn gift from Aunty @Coma Thanks
There are 4018 replies with an estimated read time of 553 minutes .
That is over 9 hours of some really ridiculous conversations also some equally interesting and civilised ones
Well done US
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Happy arbitrary star cycle celebration, Thready!!
Well note, @Coma !! ^^
Also… if it has a birthday, it needs a name!
So, @Pilgrimsmaster , it’s time to fulfill your duties and name your thread baby! 
(and the title is it’s job, so not a valid name!) 
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That is part of the reason I constantly keep an eye on this thread. I don’t want to have to spend weeks trying to catch up again 
. Besides, the conversations here are super interesting most of the time.
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