Humans Put Into Suspended Animation
Doctors have put humans into a state of suspended animation for the first time in the US. Experts are considering it as a groundbreaking trial that would provide surgeons moe time to save critically injured patients.
Humans Put Into Suspended Animation- How Does It Work?
The “suspended animation in humans” involves rapidly cooling the brain to less than 10-degree Celcius by replacing the patient’s blood with an ice-cold saline solution. Typically the saline solution is pumped directly into the aorta, the primary artery that carries blood away from the heart to the rest of the body.
This process was formally known as EPR or emergency preservation and resuscitation.
The clinical trial is being carried on people who sustain such catastrophic injuries that they are in danger of bleeding to death & who suffer a heart attack even before the surgeons can treat them.
The patients, who are often victims of stabbings or shootings, would typically have less than a 5 percent chance of survival.
Samuel Tisherman, at the University of Maryland, in Baltimore, said at least one patient had had the procedure. Although he did not elaborate on whether that patient
or any other patient undergoing the treatment had survived, he termed the process “a little surreal.”
This technique-Humans Put Into Suspended Animation is designed to reduce brain activity to a near standstill and to slow the patient’s physiology. This process gives surgeons sufficient time, perhaps more than one hour, to operate.
Once the patients undergo treatment, they are warmed up and resuscitated.
This clinical trial aims to reduce the brain damage that patients are often left with if they survive such critical injuries. When the heart stops and blood stops circulating, the brain quickly becomes starved of oxygen, leading to irreparable damage within about five minutes.
The US clinical trial will compare the outcomes of 20 men and women who receive standard emergency care or EPR. The test is due to run until the end of the year, and full results are not expected until late 2020.
One complication of the ‘suspended animation’ or the EPR procedure is that patients’ cells may be damaged as they are warmed up after surgery.
Can This Trial Also Give Us A Hope For Extreme Hibernation for interstellar travel?
NASA considers this as a “distinct prospectus.”
The premiere US space agency is instead finding ways of putting astronauts into a torpor, so reducing their metabolism for extended periods.
Kevin Fong consultant anesthetist at University College London hospital said that if EPR works, it’ll be a game-changer. Kevin is the author of- Extremes: Life, Death and the Limits of the Human Body
Editors Note- Humans Put Into Suspended Animation, EPR Clinical Trials In the US, Clinical Trials To Reduce Brain Damage, Trials on Traum Patients.
