Saving lives with suspended animation - Medicine - cryonics - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Dec, 2001

The ability to bring back patients from death after severe trauma or a heart arrest looms in the not-too-distant future, Peter Safar, Distinguished Professor of Resuscitation Medicine, University of Pittsburgh (Pa.), told the American Society of Anesthesiology. He and fellow researchers are testing a technique that could one day save heart-arrest victims who cannot be resuscitated. In the laboratory, they have successfully produced a state of suspended animation for delayed resuscitation by rapidly flushing cold saline (salt water) into the aorta (the main artery) of lab animals. The technique quickly cools the brain, heart, and organs to five to 10 [degrees] C, producing profound hypothermia (lowered body temperature).

A similar technique is being tested as well to help victims of severe blood loss, possibly due to trauma or an auto accident, with the heart continuing to beat, by purposely lowering their body temperature slightly while they are being transported to the hospital and resuscitated.

When hypothermia occurs under uncontrolled circumstances--from exposure to cold weather, for example--it can kill. Produced in a controlled, deliberate manner, however, it could save lives, maintains Safar. A number of cases have been reported where victims who have drowned in frozen lakes and ponds have been revived after having been pulled from the water after as long as 60 minutes. In nonclinical studies, the University of Pittsburgh team has successfully revived laboratory animals after two hours of death.

Rapid, severe chilling of the body that produces a state of suspended animation one day could buy doctors the critical additional time they need to transport and resuscitate patients in whom blood flow has not merely slowed, such as during a heart attack or shock, but stopped when the heart fully arrests, he predicts. "Hypothermia preserves the viability of organs deprived of oxygen."

Hypothermic strategies challenge some traditional medical practices, Safar admits. Physicians have long believed that they must warm patients in shock, not cool them. They also have known that hypothermia can increase blood loss by interfering with clotting. According to studies by Safar, however, the controlled lowering of body temperature by only two to three degrees does not significantly hamper blood clotting. "There's a big difference between uncontrolled, spontaneous, moderate-to-severe hypothermia and controlled, mild hypothermia." Uncontrolled hypothermia can result in shivering, a potentially dangerous complication. Controlled, mild cooling circumvents this, he indicates.