New Treatment Brings Patients Back From The Dead

New research has shown that inducing a mild state of hypothermia following a severe heart attack may help to avoid brain damage and increase a patient’s survival odds. During a heart attack, interrupted blood flow starves organs of oxygen and may cause permanent organ damage or death. Total-body hypothermia lowers the body temperature and slows the metabolic rate, protecting organs from reduced oxygen supply during the interruption of blood flow. This new technology has been brought into the spot light recently because a similar treatment was used on professional football player, Kevin Everett, following a sever spinal cord injury sustained on national television. Diseases of the heart are listed among the leading causes of death in the United States. This new technology is important because of its capacity to potentially save the lives of patients who suffer from many of these heart complications. Doctors are constantly in the process of improving this new technology. A new method which uses a slushy type saline that contains ice particles is in the works, and will help to reduce body temperature even faster than current methods.

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