While I'm in suspended animation…
Doctors for the first time introduced a person into a state of suspended animation
In the USA, doctors during the experiment for the first time introduced a person into a state of suspended animation, writes New Scientist.
The need for this in this case is caused by the fact that many people who have received life-threatening injuries die before surgeons could have time to help them.
Samuel Tisherman from the University of Maryland Graduate School of Medicine in Baltimore said that he and his colleagues managed to put at least one patient into a state of suspended animation. At the same time, he did not want to disclose how many patients survived as a result of such a procedure.
The new technique was included as an experiment in a complex of resuscitation measures, which patients who are delivered to the university medical center with life-threatening injuries, such as gunshot or stab wounds, can count on. Such victims have heart failure, they lose more than half of their blood, and doctors usually have only a few minutes to help them. At the same time, the probability of survival is less than five percent.
According to the developers, they quickly cool the human body to about 10-15 degrees Celsius by replacing all the blood with saline solution cooled to near zero temperature. At the same time, brain activity almost completely stops, and the patient, "who otherwise could have been pronounced dead," is disconnected from the cooling system and placed on the operating table.
After that, the surgical team has two hours for surgical intervention designed to eliminate the cause of acute blood loss. Then the patient's normal temperature is restored and they try to start the work of the heart.
As part of the study, the results of treatment of ten people using this technique will be compared with the results of treatment of the same number of people who were in a similar situation, but did not receive such help. The US FDA approved the experiment. The patient's consent in such a test is not required, since we are talking about a condition that is directly life-threatening.
According to Tisherman, he hopes to be able to announce the test results in full by the end of 2020.
At a normal body temperature, that is, about 37 degrees Celsius, the cells of the human body constantly need oxygen to generate energy. When the heart stops contracting, the blood no longer carries oxygen to the cells, and without it, the brain can only live for about five minutes, after which irreversible damage will occur. However, a decrease in body and brain temperature leads to a slowdown or suspension of all chemical reactions in cells, which as a result need less oxygen.
Animal studies have shown that pigs with a life-threatening injury can be cooled for up to three hours and surgical treatment of injuries can be performed in this mode, after which they can be resuscitated.
At the same time, according to Tisherman, the maximum possible period for which it is possible to safely enter a state of suspended animation in this way is still unknown. When the cells are reheated, they can get specific damage due to a number of chemical reactions, and the longer the cells are without oxygen, the more damage occurs. Probably, to solve this problem, it is possible to inject a mixture of certain substances into the tissues and so increase the period of suspended animation, but now the causes of such cellular damage have not been studied enough.
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