Even with all of the medical advances we’ve made in the past couple of years, doctors still don’t have much time at all to save those suffering from injuries like gunshots or knife-wounds. But a new technique underway at Pittsburgh’s UPMC Presbyterian Hospital could give doctors just the time they need, by essentially suspending a patient’s life in order to save it.
Led by hospital surgeon Samuel Tisherman, UPMC Presbyterian’s new technique puts a patient in what’s essentially suspended animation, replacing a patient’s blood with a cold saline solution. This drops the recipient’s temperature and stops nearly all cellular activity. Since it takes around 15 minutes to replace all of a patient’s blood, as well as drop their temperature to 50°, the patient is technically clinically dead by the end of this part of the procedure—no breath or brain activity—but cells can survive for hours at such low temperatures.
Theoretically, after suspending the patient’s life thusly, they would then be unplugged from medical machinery and taken to an operating room, where surgeons have up to two hours to make the repairs necessary. Once that’s done, doctors would replace the saline with blood, slowly warming the body and bringing the patient back to life.
“We are suspending life, but we don’t like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction,” Tisherman said in New Scientist. “So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation.”
I hate to break it to you, but your whole technique is kind of science fiction-y, so. Also, suspended animation is way less of a mouthful.
As such a technique would be performed in situations where it’s unlikely that a patient, or patient’s family, would be able to give consent, getting the green light to even try it has been a struggle. However, as it would be used to save people with injuries that would almost definitely be fatal, the Food and Drug Administration has approved Tisherman’s technique. Doctors are now on call for the procedure at UPMC Presbyterian, and plan to actually perform it later this month.
Source Discovery.
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