The patient was placed in a state of near brain death for more than two hours.
An unprecedented experiment was conducted across the Atlantic. Doctors managed to resuscitate a patient: they placed him in a state of near brain death and then woke him up. The website New Scientist retraces this operation like no other.
Deep hypothermia
The technique used by American doctors is called “Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation” or “suspended life” procedure in French. Doctors first place the patient in a state ofhypothermia by replacing his blood with a saline solution, his body temperature drops to between 10 and 15 degrees. The patient is in a state close to clinical death: his blood no longer circulates and his brain activity is almost interrupted. The surgeons have only two hours to intervene. Then the patient is warmed up and his heart restarted.
Previous trials have been conducted on animals
The objective of this operation is to successfully operate on patients who would not survive without this procedure. For now, at least one person has been placed in this state of suspended life. She had previously been the victim of a serious accident, such as a stab or gunshot wound, then a cardiac arrest.
Similar studies were conducted on pigs and the results were conclusive. The doctors had managed to hold them for 3 hours before “resuscitating” them. “We felt it was time to try it on patients, explains Samuel Tisherman, the study director, we are learning a lot as the study progresses. When we can prove that it works, we we will be able to extend this technique to allow patients to survive, when they otherwise would not have been able to.” The American research team expects to be able to provide the first results of its study at the end of 2020.
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