Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Suspended Aimation technique can bring back dead to life
Pumping ice-cold fluid into patients' veins could bring them 'back from the dead'
Last updated at 4:28 PM on 27th September 2010
Victims of violent crime and road accidents could be 'brought back from the dead' with a pioneering new treatment.
Surgeons often only have minutes to save patients who have sustained gunshot, knife or car crash wounds.
But scientists said doctors could gain extra time to operate by pumping ice-cold fluid into a patient's veins.
The huge drop in body temperature slows the dying process and stops the brain from shutting down before the heart stops beating.
Research leader Dr Hasan Alam, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, claims the procedure could save 90 per cent of patients with fatal wounds.
He said: 'By cooling them rapidly in this fashion, we can convert that almost-certain death into almost-certain survival.
'We're talking about 90 per cent-plus survival with normal cognitive function, normal brain activity, normal organ function. It's challenging but it's doable.'
Dr Alam has successfully performed his 'suspended animation' technique in operations on hundreds of pigs and now hopes to begin tests on humans.
The surgery involves pumping a chilled fluid called a 'plasma expander', which contains nutrients and chemicals to preserve organs, into a patient's blood vessels.
Under normal circumstances, humans suffer brain damage if they are deprived of oxygen for five minutes and death follows 15 minutes later.
However, cooling the body slows metabolic activity, thereby reducing the need for oxygen.
Once surgery to repair a wound is complete, the patient is gradually warmed up by infusing their own blood back into their bodies.
Dr Kevin Fong, consultant anaesthetist at University College London Hospital, believes the discovery could "revolutionise" surgery.
He said: 'Death is not a moment but a process which we might be able to stretch out, giving doctors a chance to intervene.
'Hypothermia is helping us re-draw the line between life and death, and it has the potential to revolutionise everything from trauma surgery to resuscitation medicine.'
A documentary detailing the new research will be screened at 9pm tonight on BBC 2 'Horizon: Back From the Dead'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_animation
INFO: Suspended animation is the slowing of life processes by external means without termination. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. Extreme cold can be used to precipitate the slowing of an individual's functions; use of this process has led to the developing science of cryonics. Cryonics is another method of life preservation but it cryopreserved organisms using liquid nitrogen that will preserve the organism until reanimation. Laina Beasley was kept in suspended animation as a two-celled embryo for 13 years.
Human hibernation: There are many research projects currently investigating how to achieve "induced hibernation" in humans. This ability to hibernate humans would be useful for a number of reasons, such as saving the lives of seriously ill or injured people by temporarily putting them in a state of hibernation until treatment can be given. NASA is also casually interested in possibly putting astronauts in hibernation when going on very long space journeys, though they are not funding any research to this effect.
There are cases of accidental human hibernation. The most recent is the case of Mitsutaka Uchikoshi, a Japanese man who survived the cold for 24 days in 2006 without food or water when he fell into a hypothermic state similar to hibernation.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1315525/Pumping-ice-cold-fluid-patients-veins-bring-people-dead.html#ixzz10tZPzflu
http://www.discovermagazine.com/2007/may/suspended-animation
Last updated at 4:28 PM on 27th September 2010
Victims of violent crime and road accidents could be 'brought back from the dead' with a pioneering new treatment.
Surgeons often only have minutes to save patients who have sustained gunshot, knife or car crash wounds.
But scientists said doctors could gain extra time to operate by pumping ice-cold fluid into a patient's veins.
The huge drop in body temperature slows the dying process and stops the brain from shutting down before the heart stops beating.
Research leader Dr Hasan Alam, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, claims the procedure could save 90 per cent of patients with fatal wounds.
He said: 'By cooling them rapidly in this fashion, we can convert that almost-certain death into almost-certain survival.
'We're talking about 90 per cent-plus survival with normal cognitive function, normal brain activity, normal organ function. It's challenging but it's doable.'
Dr Alam has successfully performed his 'suspended animation' technique in operations on hundreds of pigs and now hopes to begin tests on humans.
The surgery involves pumping a chilled fluid called a 'plasma expander', which contains nutrients and chemicals to preserve organs, into a patient's blood vessels.
Under normal circumstances, humans suffer brain damage if they are deprived of oxygen for five minutes and death follows 15 minutes later.
However, cooling the body slows metabolic activity, thereby reducing the need for oxygen.
Once surgery to repair a wound is complete, the patient is gradually warmed up by infusing their own blood back into their bodies.
Dr Kevin Fong, consultant anaesthetist at University College London Hospital, believes the discovery could "revolutionise" surgery.
He said: 'Death is not a moment but a process which we might be able to stretch out, giving doctors a chance to intervene.
'Hypothermia is helping us re-draw the line between life and death, and it has the potential to revolutionise everything from trauma surgery to resuscitation medicine.'
A documentary detailing the new research will be screened at 9pm tonight on BBC 2 'Horizon: Back From the Dead'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_animation
INFO: Suspended animation is the slowing of life processes by external means without termination. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. Extreme cold can be used to precipitate the slowing of an individual's functions; use of this process has led to the developing science of cryonics. Cryonics is another method of life preservation but it cryopreserved organisms using liquid nitrogen that will preserve the organism until reanimation. Laina Beasley was kept in suspended animation as a two-celled embryo for 13 years.
Human hibernation: There are many research projects currently investigating how to achieve "induced hibernation" in humans. This ability to hibernate humans would be useful for a number of reasons, such as saving the lives of seriously ill or injured people by temporarily putting them in a state of hibernation until treatment can be given. NASA is also casually interested in possibly putting astronauts in hibernation when going on very long space journeys, though they are not funding any research to this effect.
There are cases of accidental human hibernation. The most recent is the case of Mitsutaka Uchikoshi, a Japanese man who survived the cold for 24 days in 2006 without food or water when he fell into a hypothermic state similar to hibernation.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1315525/Pumping-ice-cold-fluid-patients-veins-bring-people-dead.html#ixzz10tZPzflu
http://www.discovermagazine.com/2007/may/suspended-animation
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