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Blog post:
Cryotherapy Helping to Enable Resuscitation
Date:
this blog came out some time before year 2017. A facebook blog app
ceased to function, and MEDIC's back-up captured the content but not the date of
writing.
We teach that drowning is more survivable if it's in cold
water. Learn why, and how
cooling down a dead person can be an important link in the chain of
resuscitation. This is new research, there is not a lot of data on it,
and so it is not standard protocol … yet.
If the video linked above doesn't work anymore, try
here.
Here is the text from the video linked above, in case the video is no longer
there.
~ ~ ~
Bringing the dead back to life has been a dream of
humankind since the beginning of time. But could revival ever become reality?
Our Cover Story is reported by Tracy Smith:
Joe Tiralosi, of Brooklyn, N.Y., has always been an optimist. He says life is
good . . . especially now.
Five years ago, Tiralosi -- then 56 and in good health -- was at work as a
driver in New York City one hot August day when he felt sick . . . really sick.
"I just suddenly didn't feel like myself," he recalled. "I didn't know what it
was.
"So I called home and I spoke to my wife and I told her, 'I don't feel good. I
think I want to just come home.' And that's when she said to me, 'Why don't you
just go to the hospital?'"
He walked into New York Presbyterian on his own power -- and promptly dropped
dead.
"It was like they shut the lights out and I just collapsed and fell on the
floor. My heart stopped, and the nurse was -- I heard screaming. And that was
it."
But that wasn't it.
Tiralosi was brought back from the dead. He says it was divine intervention, but
it's also a testament to perseverance of his medical team, and the power of some
bone-chilling cold.
Consider the scene from the 1997 blockbuster "Titanic": the big ship has gone
down, and the icy water has apparently taken its toll on the 1,500 victims.
"Is there anyone alive out there?" yelled an officer of the RMS Carpathia.
As it turns out, there might have been.
"Now, the reality is we know that today if those people had been found, many of
them could potentially have been saved," said Dr. Sam Parnia, "because by virtue
of dying in ice cold water, their brain and their cells would've been preserved.
"People who had died could've been saved if they had died today, and if -- and I
say this with a capital "I" -- if all the right care had been provided them."
He told Smith the level of progress in resuscitation after
people die has advanced enormously: "It's astonishing."
Dr. Parnia runs the resuscitation research program at New York's Stony Brook
University Medical School, and in his new book, "Erasing Death," writes that
death really isn't a moment, but a process that can be interrupted and often
reversed, with the help of new techniques.
In the century since the Titanic, for instance, we've learned a few things about
cold water.
In 1986, two-and-a-half-year-old Michelle Funk drowned in an icy stream in Utah.
The little girl was submerged for more than an hour, and technically dead. But
the cold water chilled her down to 66 degrees, enough to stave off brain damage.
Little Michelle woke up and, as Susan Spencer reported, went on with her life.
Michelle doesn't remember anything about her ordeal, but Spencer said, "her
doctors will never forget it."
Today, cooling devices do much the same thing as that icy stream: it chills
people whose hearts have stopped and preserves their brains until doctors can
figure out how to get their hearts going again.
Cooling, said Dr. Parnia, "buys us time. So, for example, if somebody were to
suddenly collapse and die at home, what we could do is go into the freezer and
take out our frozen peas, frozen vegetables, put them on the body, and try to do
CPR at the same time, so we can slow down the rate by which they're getting
brain damage."
But despite what we've learned, the chances of being brought back from the dead
are still pretty small.
Last year in the U.S., just under 24 percent of those who had a cardiac arrest
in a hospital survived the experience. Outside a hospital, the survival rate was
less than 10 percent.
One of the reasons, Dr. Parnia says, is that emergency workers sometimes quit
CPR too soon.
"It's harder than your tough workouts in the gym," he said. "And if you do this
for a while it gets very, very tiring. People get out of breath. So imagine
trying to do it for an hour."
Compression machines can carry on for an extended time, because longer is often
better.
"A lot of doctors will stop compressions after about 20
minutes," said Dr. Parnia. "But we know from research that if you go on for 40
minutes to an hour, your chances of bringing someone back to life is much, much
higher."
In Joe Tiralosi's case, it was all by hand.
How many people gave Tiralosi compressions? "I don't know the number. Dozens,
many, many people all taking turns."
And so, after about 4,500 chest compressions -- and nearly an hour in the
cooling suit -- Joe Tiralosi's doctors brought him back: cold, fragile, but
alive.
"What'd they give you that day?" asked Smith
"I heard there was quite a concoction of certain medications," he said.
"But I mean, bigger than that, what'd they give you?"
"Well, gave my life back; they gave me the chance to live again," Tiralosi said.
"Sometimes people tell me, 'You know, being back, what's the best day that you
can remember?' And honestly, every day is the best day to remember."
There is, of course, no way to measure what it all means to Joe's wife, Janet;
son, Joey; or daughter, Christina.
When asked what it's like to have her father sitting there, Christina said,
"It's awesome. It's amazing. You know, he's here every day. I'm so grateful and
I'm so happy to be with him."
Life is even sweeter, it seems, when you've fought death -- and won.
.
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