> Once her body temperature had reached 30C, they used a defibrillator to jump-start her heart some six hours after emergency services were contacted.
> Mrs Schoeman was released from hospital 12 days later, with only some lingering issues with the mobility and sensitivity of her hands due to the hypothermia.
> How long her heart stopped for is not clear - she may still have had some circulation, although not detectable.
Provides a constant flow of oxygenated blood which allows for higher endurance, longer "holding of breath", and in the case of severe injury, oxygenated blood circulation to prevent death (unless there is catastrophic blood loss which moots the machine's ability)....
Recall all the famous designs of Cyborgs [and The Borg] with the tubes running into their face/head/nose - the tubes could be pumping externally oxygenated blood to the vitals which would suffer most in catastrophic physical unplanned destruction events.
Also, such a system would likely require giant cannulae placed in rather inconvenient places, e.g., the neck, thigh, or chest, as in ECMO. That would limit movement significantly.
Once back in the late 40's to for fighter pilots, and again in the 90's, a practice they called "Blood loading".
In his case, the lungs are still working, but there's no scientific reason we don't have cyborg lungs yet.
“Nobody is dead until warm and dead”: Prolonged resuscitation is warranted in arrested hypothermic victims also in remote areas – A retrospective study from northern Norway
J. Hilmo, T. Naesheim, M. Gilbert https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030095721... (open access, CC licence)
Same hospital and team that treated Anna Bågenholm (mentioned in other comments, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm), and I guess that case is part of the study.
Because creating a cooling system to use on a body with a central nervous system fighting to keep it warm is just like central HVAC.
It's exciting stuff, but it's definitely not widespread.
- The headline is clickbait/false really. The six-hour cardiac arrest is pretty much made up/guessed. In fact, they don't know how long she was in cardiac arrest. The article actually goes on to state "how long her heart stopped for is not clear", so it's a bit odd to say she had a six-hour cardiac arrest.
- The six hours timeframe actually refers to the fact that a defibrillator was used 6 hours after the emergency services were called.
- It mentions that doctors are stating it's the longest cardiac arrest ever recorded in Spain. This is a very odd thing for a professional doctor to do, when they have no evidence to back that up. As a doctor, you can't just guess she was in cardiac arrest for 6 hours and record it down as being what happend. That's misleading information.
Children do better.
The mammalian diving reflex prepares the body for long periods of immersion. Not to be relied upon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Bågenholm
The electrocardiogram connected to her showed no signs of life,[2] but Gilbert knew patients should be "warmed up before you declare them dead".[25]
https://web.archive.org/web/20191206164443/http://www.leapbe...
If you've never taken a CPR course, sign up for one! It could save a life one day.
Apparently he noticed that equally injured soldiers would die at different times based upon how close they were to the camp fire with those closest expiring way before those laid out the farthest from the fire.
Could be a bs story, I never actually looked into it.
If I was rich enough I'd host a competition to extend the life of rats: Each year, whoever could demonstrate a technique to reliably extend the lifespan of a rat by at least 10% over the previous year's record would win a million dollars. I expect that the wining entry would involve putting the rats into controlled hypothermia.
Over the years the maximum lifespan will grow and we may even find that we can put rats into hibernation indefinitely. It would then be a question of whether we can apply the same techniques to humans.
Something quite close to this is being done for mice. The Methuselah Foundation awards cash prizes for (1) 'the longest-living mouse' and (2) the longest-living 'rejuvenated' mouse, i.e. you have to design a treatment that works for 'old' mice, extending their life as much as possible.
Here's an article about Aubrey de Grey, the guy behind the Methuselah Foundation award: https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/09/19/aubrey-de-gre...
Hypothermia due to a low environmental temperature has already been flagged as the way to come out of various otherwise fatal situations in more or less one piece. Besides that, even if no pulse can be detected that doesn't mean there isn't a pulse, and that can make all the difference just by itself.
Basically, no. Not that we know of yet anyway. This is more of a 'stars aligning' story and her being lucky not to have the bad side effects of her situation. The bad side effects happen more times than not in this sort of thing. Death or brain damage.
you'd get more from calorie restriction.
https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/child-survive...
There are a few such known examples, also some that looked good for a while but ended with a tragedy as much as a day later. I can see some parallels with the drowning case due to the hypothermia, the onset of which must have been relatively fast.
Another recent example of one of our rock star doctors involving the successful reattachment of a severed hand without blood flow for 10 hours.
https://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/30483/super-surgeon-dr...
Early open heart surgery was pioneered with TWO patients whose circulatory systems were connected together so that patient two could could breathe and pump blood for patient one while the heart was stopped.
Amazing (in a sort of blank-faced-blink-blink sort of way)
I.e. is the state of your brain preserved just by the connections of the neurons? Or is the "RAM" also critical?
wow, this is so intriguing. i like this analogy even if i don't know how accurate it is.
we indeed have things that we forget (running out of space?) and things that take time to remember (disk latency).
Now I want to read a sci-fi book with this sentence in it.
If the brain continues its metabolism without oxygen it induces neuronal cell death.
The mechanism is called anoxic depolarization. Sodium–potassium pumps in the cell walls need to work to maintain K+ and Na+ ion gradient. When the pump runs out of energy it causes glutamate and aspartate concentrations inside the cell grow. When they grow past some critical threshold, it starts programmed cell death.
Cooling he body and brain can prevent this when the brain metabolism slows down to match the lower oxygen levels.
There are cases of people without short term memory. That to me qualifies as RAM, guess its not critical to survival.
The connections between the neurons is the architecture. The neurons themselves have state. If that state is wiped across the brain, I'd be surprised if the body connected to it could even still keep itself alive.
To the actual question though, neurons die/fail very quickly at their normal metabolic rate without an oxygen supply. You are certainly dead once that happens.
These procedures are all about providing some oxygen and dropping the metabolic rate to keep the neurons alive longer than they would unassisted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
HN has had countless generic arguments about the US health care system. Turning a thread about something else into one of those is a step in the wrong direction. The major controversies eat up all the smaller topics, but the smaller topics are what actually gratify curiosity.
I went to the US on business - our corporate insurance means there's a $1000 excess that we pay up front.
Went to a hospital for a minor issue. At no point was there any price list shown, at the end I was asked for $390 before been given my prescription. That was the end of it I thought, sickeningly high charge for 2 minutes with a doctor, a 10p tablet, and hours of waiting around. I asked for an itemised bill, but they couldn't give me one.
A few weeks later I get another bill through the post for another $390 (slightly different amount), complete with the entire bill. The whole bill was about $2k. The 10p tablet? $250. In fact they originally gave me a 50mg one for $9, then took it off the bill, then gave me 2x25mg ones for $250. I then had a $1100 "uninsured discount" which brought the total price down to just before $800.
The bulk of the bill was a single line that was fairly incomprehensible but seemed to cover pointless taking my blood pressure 3 times and the 2 minute consultation with a Doctor who barely spoke to me, and renting the chair for a few hours I guess.
edit: see http://imgur.com/ERjjQBil.png
The U.S. is seriously broken.
Survival rates:
- Cardiac arrest (outside hospitals): < 6%
- Cardiac arrest (inside hospitals): < 25%
- Heart attack (myocardial infarction): > 90%
I met the most spiritual woman who was also in a crusade against Abrahamic religions say that
What a completely unfalsifiable version of logic when the “plan” could just as easily be the treatment
I got through the impasse by saying it just gives people choices even if the choice is already written in stone
Schrodinger’s free will
