Deep-chilling trauma patients

Deep-chilling trauma patients

http://news.yahoo.com/deep-chilling-trauma-patients-try-save-them-201036977.html

Trauma surgeons will soon be trying suspended animation in the Pittsburgh area. Critically injured patients that should be fixable but unfortunately bleed to death first can soon be put in "emergency preservation and resuscitation" or EPR. Patients will be put in extreme hypothermia to allow them to survive without brain damage while surgeons do repair work. The body temperature will be dropped to as low as 50 degrees.

The experiment is funded by the Department of Defense and will be done at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The study will later be expanded to the University of Maryland. The University of Pittsburgh is starting a public awareness campaign Tuesday with signs on city buses, YouTube videos, two town hall meetings and a website. The campaign is required by the FDA before the study begins. Normally patients need to consent to be part of medical experiments but patients bleeding to death will not be able to and there isn't enough time to get permission from family. Residents worried about risks can put their name on an opt-out list.

Animal studies have been done using deep hypothermia on dogs and pigs by the same researchers and other research groups who stated the animals seemed to be cognitively fine. The animals were sedated and bled until their hearts stopped. Then ice-cold fluids were flushed through the body's largest artery, deep-chilling the brain and heart and the rest of the body. After two hours, they were sewn up, gradually warmed and put on a heart lung machine to restart blood flow.

Bioethicist, Dr. Arthur Caplan, who is watching the research, says it will spur some rethinking about that line between life and death. He says one concern is that some people might survive but with enough brain damage that they'd have preferred death. The "informed community" with the awareness campaign cannot adequately cover that scenario.

Deep-chilling patients makes sense to slow all the bodily functions and blood flow and preserve brain function. There is no way to fully test if the animals retained their brain function in prior research. The only way to test if this works on humans is to try it in the extreme cases where the patients are bleeding so badly there is no other choice. However, there may be people who survive that do suffer brain damage and there is no way to remedy that damage. It may be a person who would have opted out of the study if they were adequately informed. It will be interesting to see how many people opt out of the study.