A team of doctors from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (USA) claims to have put the first humans in “suspended animation” for the first time in history, as part of a trial that could allow professionals of health to resolve traumatic injuries such as a stab wound or a gunshot wound, which would otherwise end with the death of the patient, according to an exclusive report by the popular science magazine New Scientist .
What is suspended animation?
This process is based on rapidly cooling a person’s body by external means without reaching death, leaving the body at around 10-15 degrees and replacing all their blood with a low-temperature saline solution. Until now, this technique, except in the field of science fiction, had never been applied to human beings. This technique is intended to be used in urgent trauma where the patient is between life and death.
According to team leader Samuel Tisherman, they have placed at least one patient in suspended animation, but he has not disclosed how many people have survived as a result of this process which they call “emergency preservation and resuscitation” (it is not known if some of the patients has survived the test).
The technique is being carried out in people with acute trauma, who are at risk of bleeding to death and have suffered cardiac arrest, that is, there are only a few minutes left to operate to avoid the death of the patient.
How does it work?
By rapidly cooling the body to 10-15 ° C and replacing all the blood with ice-cold saline, the subject’s brain activity stops almost completely . This is because oxygen is no longer transported to the brain, which stops energy production. At normal body temperature, around 37 ° C, our cells need a constant supply of oxygen to produce energy. Without this process, even five minutes without oxygen to the brain can cause irreversible damage. Usually the solution is pumped directly into the aorta, the main artery that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body.
Thus, after cooling and the consequent disconnection, the patient is transferred to the operating room to operate. Surgeons now have 2 hours to repair injuries before the patient’s body warms up again and the heart restarts.
The experts got the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration ( FDA) to carry out the trial even without the consent of the patient, as there is no alternative treatment available.
Tisherman’s team claims to be able to announce the full results of this landmark trial of the medicine by the end of 2020.
“Once we can show that it works, we can expand the usefulness of this technique to help patients survive, something they could not otherwise,” Tisherman said.
Previous studies have shown that suspended animation can help save injured pigs, although it has not been successful every time. “We felt it was time to bring it to our patients,” Tisherman told New Scientist , who has shared the finding exclusively. ” Now we are doing it and we are learning a lot as we go through the test.”
Complications and future vision
One complication of the procedure is that patients’ cells can be damaged as they heat up after surgery.
NASA believes that full hibernation for interstellar travel is still a fairly distant goal. The agency is investigating ways to put astronauts into torpor thereby reducing their metabolism for long periods of time, but at the moment this is a rather remote prospect.
Of course, Tisherman was blunt: “I want to make it clear that we are not trying to send people to Saturn,” he says. “We are trying to buy more time to save lives.”
Reference: NewScientist
