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Comment by sigmaprimus | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate your method of breaking down the problem. I'm still stuck on the idea of using different materials but after applying your thought process I think a gelatin coating may solve the lubrication issue and possibly allow a topical numming agent like Ambesol or anti inflammatory to be infused in the gelatin layer.

It is possible that because my procedure ran longer than expected due to complications, they either had to reinsert a different tube or the tube they used was not designed to be used for that long.

I had my gallbladder removed and unfortunately some of the gallstones got stuck in the bile ducts and they had to chase them down. This turned a 45 minute procedure into a 3 1/2 hour operation and once finished it took another 2 hours to wake up.

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The issue with coatings and lubricants is that you’d need to use a nontrivial amount for them to be effective, and that means the patient is at risk of aspirating the substance. That happens, and boom, you’ve got aspiration pneumonia. Even with some kind of encapsulated or solid gelatin coating you’d have to be very careful to make sure it doesn’t leave any kind of residue or break into pieces that could be aspirated.

Considering solid materials with ultralow friction (e.g. fullerene-like nanostructures) might be worthwhile.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21825776/?dopt=Abstract

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11001049/?dopt=Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1088/0022-3727/39/18/R01

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1366649

This is a dumb idea that would presumably cause other problems but ... what if they put the patient upside down? It's certainly make using some sort of lubricant a lot less dangerous. Now presumably it would introduce a host of other problems that would offset this but who knows.

I don't know what kind of anesthesia you were on, but a quick google suggests some kinds of anesthesia cause difficulty swallowing. I also can easily pull up a link suggesting that dehydration is a common cause of sore throat following any major surgery.

So this may not be entirely about the physical contact of the tube.

I am not a doctor, just someone who has seen too many of them over the years for my own medical dramas.

Edit: Just to be crystal clear, I am absolutely not trying to suggest anything for you, medically speaking. The above observations are food for thought concerning the problem space under discussion. That's it. That's all it is.

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