Slashdot Mirror
Loud Music Can Cause Lung Collapse
ahrenritter writes "This Reuters article discusses a report in the medical journal Thorax describing the cases of three young men who suffered a lung collapse (pneumothorax) apparently triggered by standing too close to very loud concert speakers. A fourth case occurred in a car that was outfitted with a 1,000 watt bass box. I guess deafness isn't all we have to worry about now!"
but anyone else ever been at a concert with such low rumbling rediculous bass that you can feel your heart beating a little off?
this only happened to me with dead voices on air, which uses a rediculous about of computer processing, but this was beyond nautious.
I had pneumothorax back in February, but it wasn't sound related. I was in the shower and for no apparent reason I felt as though someone had hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. I thought it was a heart attack at first, but since I was only 21 I ruled that out as unlikely.
I waited 3 days before I actually went to the hospital and those were the most agonizing days of my life. I'd run out of breath walking from my apartment to my car (literally, 10 feet). I just had this sharp stabbing pain in the left side of my chest. When I went to the hospital the doctor told me that it was rare spontaneous pneumothorax, and that it usually happened to tall, scrawny males that were smokers (I'm not a smoker). Anyways, 5 hours later I left the hospital with a tube coming out of my chest and a prescription for some Darvocet. I had to keep that tube in my chest to relieve the pressure that was preventing my lung from inflating for 3 days.
It was really interesting to look at my chest x-rays though. My left lung had completely collapsed! It's never a good thing when doctors are telling everyone that's walking by the computer screen to "Check out how collapsed this lung is!"
Anyway, I just wanted to give some first hand experience.