To Treat the Dead

This article presumes to rethink the idea of death, specifically in the case of a miocardial infarction. Originally, it was thought that cells die within the first few minutes of a heart attack, but according to Dr. Lance Becker, cells actually die when oxygen is perfused back into the blood. Therefore, emergency rooms have been not only not been helping the condition by quickly restarting the heart and perfusing oxygen, but also killing the very cells that they are trying to rescue. A study "showed a remarkable rate of success in treating sudden cardiac arrest with an approach that involved, among other things, a "cardioplegic" blood infusion to keep the heart in a state of suspended animation. Patients were put on a heart-lung bypass machine to maintain circulation to the brain until the heart could be safely restarted. The study involved just 34 patients, but 80 percent of them were discharged from the hospital alive. In one study of traditional methods, the figure was about 15 percent."