I recently watched a BBC documentary called “Back From The Dead”, mainly about using extreme hypothermia to prevent IRI in some rather extreme cases, though drug development was also mentioned (that portion mostly focused on the study of cell death).
One case was a Norwegian woman who fell in a crevasse while hiking on a glacier—the extreme cold plus 3+ hours of constant CPR was enough to keep her brain alive long enough to be revived. She made a full recovery and now works at the hospital that revived her.
Another was a man who’s blood was intentionally cooled to extreme hypothermic temperatures in order to repair an aortic aneurism. Doctors were able to operate for 45 minutes with the patient in full cardiac arrest with no ill effects.
It’s amazing to me that the basis for these techniques have been around for so long, and yet still they seem like science fiction when anyone discusses them. Since the benefits of mild hypothermia had been at least hinted at 30+ years ago, you would think researchers would have been playing with extreme hypothermia soon after and we’d be a lot further along with this stuff in general.
I don’t have any idea how often hypothermia is actually used to save lives, but the documentary made it seem rare, with extreme hypothermia being only used in one or two hospitals in the world. Your experience seems to back that up as well.
I recently watched a BBC documentary called “Back From The Dead”, mainly about using extreme hypothermia to prevent IRI in some rather extreme cases, though drug development was also mentioned (that portion mostly focused on the study of cell death).
One case was a Norwegian woman who fell in a crevasse while hiking on a glacier—the extreme cold plus 3+ hours of constant CPR was enough to keep her brain alive long enough to be revived. She made a full recovery and now works at the hospital that revived her.
Another was a man who’s blood was intentionally cooled to extreme hypothermic temperatures in order to repair an aortic aneurism. Doctors were able to operate for 45 minutes with the patient in full cardiac arrest with no ill effects.
It’s amazing to me that the basis for these techniques have been around for so long, and yet still they seem like science fiction when anyone discusses them. Since the benefits of mild hypothermia had been at least hinted at 30+ years ago, you would think researchers would have been playing with extreme hypothermia soon after and we’d be a lot further along with this stuff in general.
I don’t have any idea how often hypothermia is actually used to save lives, but the documentary made it seem rare, with extreme hypothermia being only used in one or two hospitals in the world. Your experience seems to back that up as well.