There are a few things that any human need to survive; food, water, shelter but none are as important as the blood that flows in our veins.
Well maybe, Surgeons at the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh in the US are about to make history by starting the world’s first human trails of ‘suspended animation’.
They will take 10 people with knife and gunshot wounds too risky to operate on and remove their blood in order to buy time to fix their wounds. Yes, remove their blood.
The surgeons will then replace the patients’ blood with a chilled saline solution that will cool the body and slow down bodily functions, delaying death from blood loss. “We call it emergency preservation and resuscitation. We are suspending life, but we don’t like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction,” Dr Samuel Tisherman, a surgeon at the hospital said.
The technique was first trialled on pigs in 2000. The pig’s heart usually started beating again by itself, although some pigs needed a jump-start.
The technique does have time restrictions and death can only be staved off for a maximum of 4 hours but it is still a great leap forward in medical technology.
“If a patient comes to us two hours after dying you can’t bring them back to life. But if they’re dying and you suspend them, you have a chance to bring them back after their structural problems have been fixed,” said surgeon Peter Rhee at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who helped develop the technique.
Like most technologies, this is in its infancy and although the doctors are unwilling to make the link to Science fiction we think this is a great leap forward to achieving suspended animation and allowing the human race to explore and colonize our galaxy.
Stay Curious – C.Costigan
