Marga Shaw Mar 5, 2019:

Fistelrasen - fistulous tract revisited IMHO - Anne solved the problem with "Fistelrasen" very well. However, I do think that the use of "pus" (see Spielenschach1) muddies the waters a bit. Fistulas or fistulous tracts do not only occur in the anal region. Please see the following:

"In the literature and in clinical practice, one encounters frequent mention of the concept of coronary steal, i.e., competitive flow from a common coronary supply towards nutrient coronary and non-coronary branches, or towards fistulous tracts. The theory is that runoff from a comparatively large proximal arterial segment occurs preferentially through a lower-resistance vascular bed (like a fistula), which reduces flow to the higher-resistance nutrient coronary branches.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC101097/

José Patrício Mar 4, 2019:

As I understand Anna, that has nothing to see with fistula, it’s only a metaphor, only connections resembling that fistulas with tracks of pus?

Anne Schulz Feb 27, 2019:

Likewise, I have never seen the use of "Rasen" in association with Fisteln in German (and Big Brother G. does not know the combination either).

Marga Shaw Feb 27, 2019:

Rasen - lawn I have heard of "Bakterienrasen" = "bacterial lawn" before.
For example: Bacterial lawn is a term used by microbiologists to describe the appearance of bacterial colonies when all the individual colonies on a Petri dish agar plate merge to form a field or mat of bacteria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_lawn

I then found in Dorland's Illustrated Dictionary the following entry:
"lawn: an area sown with a thick growth of a living substance.
bacterial l., the confluent blanket of merged colonies resultng from plating a concentrated bacterial solution."

However, I have never seen the use of lawn, mat, blanket etc. in association with fistulas before.