What is a medical train wreck?
So, we in the medical profession often refer to some patients as train wrecks. The official term here is "Medical Train Wreck," although we Americans are good at shortening longer words that take too long to say, which is why some of us refer to them as MTWs. That in mind, We figured we would officially define the term for our Faux Lexicon . Word : Train Wreck Definition . A person with greater than ten co-morbidities; treatment of one condition may exacerbate another condition "The patient might be here forever, she is a medical train wreck." Example #1 : A patient with heart failure, COPD, small bowel obstruction, hypertension,, CVA, myocardial infarction, chest pain, renal failure, sepsis, etc. Surgery to repair the small bowel obstruction will probably require high doses of fluid; Due to bad lungs the anesthesiologist will refuse to extubate the patient, who will now be moved to intensive care. The patient will be treated as exacerbation of COPD f...