Are our methods of resusciation outdated? The case of resurrection

WoollyRedHat · 17-11-2013 4:58pm #1

Resurrection doesn't mean being brought back to life ala Frankenstein or a zombie incarnate but refers to the affect of resuscitation following a cardiac rresuscitation. Research is now implying that our modes of resuciation are outdated and completely belonging to the 20th century.

Suggested methods of improving our methods of revival are the cooling of the body which gives way to

slow neuronal deterioration and the monitoring and maintenance of oxygen levels to the brain ....

Parnia is head of intensive care at the Stony Brook University Hospital in New York. If you'd had a cardiac arrest at Parnia's hospital last year and undergone resuscitation, you would have had a 33% chance of being brought back from death. In an average American hospital, that figure would have fallen to 16% and (though the data is patchy) roughly the same, or less, if your heart were to have stopped beating in a British hospital.

Parnia's belief is backed up by his experience at the margin of life and death in intensive care units for the past two decades – he did his training at Guy's and St Thomas' in London – and particularly in the past five years or so when most of the advances in resuscitation have occurred. Those advances – most notably the drastic cooling of the corpse to slow neuronal deterioration and the monitoring and maintenance of oxygen levels to the brain – have not yet become accepted possibilities in the medical profession. Parnia is on a mission to change that.–

thus abetting the chances of survival, without any core devasatation, i.e brain damage or degeneration of the cells.

So why is research and actual implementation lagging behind, and are lives being unnecesarily lost due to a lack of progression and failure to adapt? It is suggested that the common methods of revival today have not changed since the 70s. That's 40 years. We commonly as a species tinker and alter the various aspects of our existence. New research allows for changes in thinking and a different way of doing things.

The articles which bring up this issue cite that it is not a financial barrier. So why do hospitals fail to introduce new advances?

At present our current chances of revival are quite slim using the current methods.

This is not an idea of immortality, but the idea of preventing unneccesary mortality.

Think of the revolutionary effect that antibiotics had when they were introduced. Without it, people would die to illnesses that we no longer regard as life threatening.

This is an issue that is highely likely to affect one of us in our lifetimes. The odds of surviving cardiac arrest are not appealing, with some studies citing less than a 20 per cent chance of survival.

Each year, around 300,000 people in the US suffer a cardiac arrest. Most victims die: of those who make it to the hospital, 85-90% leave in a box or a bag.

This statistic is further explored with the suggestion in the guardian article that up to 40,000 Americans lives and 10,000 british ones could be saved a year.

These two articles shine a very interesting light on what should be a serious issue of contention today.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/apr/06/sam-parnia-resurrection-lazarus-effect

Most doctors will do CPR for 20 minutes and then stop," he says. "The decision to stop is completely arbitrary but it is based on an instinct that after that time brain damage is very likely and you don't want to bring people back into a persistent vegetative state. But if you understand all the things that are going on in the brain in those minutes – as we now can – then you can minimise that possibility. There are numerous studies that show that if you implement all the various resuscitation steps together you not only get a doubling of your survival rates but the people who come back are not brain damaged."

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131031-will-we-ever-bring-the-dead-back

I'd be interested to hear people's opinions, and especially ones who are involved in the medical industry. Highly recommend reading the two links I've included, they're fascinating.

Just as a closing, we don't need to be zombies looking for brains to be brought back to life, we can still be highly functional human beings.