Suspended Animation….. now

  You have been involved in a severe accident. You are on the brink of death. Surgeons don’t have time to save your life – that should be it. Patients in Pittsburgh may find themselves the guinea pigs of a revolutionary experiment that involves replacing their blood with chilled salt water, a process that sounds more Sci-Fi than Sci-Fact

 

Medical researchers are experimenting with a process called induced hypothermia. The method involves draining a patient’s body of blood (if s/he hasn’t already lost a lot of it through injury) and pumping it with a chilled saline solution, so cooling it by more than 20C below the normal body temperature. It thus protects against the potential damage caused by blood or oxygen loss. The process places the patient in a state where s/he he is neither dead nor alive, buying surgeons time.

 

Once the injury is fixed, blood is pumped back through the veins, and the body is slowly warmed back up.

 

However, at the mention of the phrase, “suspended animation” one would likely think of Buck Rodgers, Aliens, (perhaps Austin Powers….) Though, if the process still sounds more Sci-Fi than Sci-Fact, it is about to begin medical trials in the USA on patients where no alternative exists. If all goes well, then scientists behind it hope to export the process globally.

 

 

Read the full article on the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140704-i-bring-the-dead-back-to-life

 

Image from: http://www.artpalestine.org/2011/03/taysir-batniji-suspended-time/

Taysir Batniji’s Suspended Time (2006)