Today I steal neat news from jwz

[theweaselking]

Consider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn't lost blood. All that's happened is his heart has stopped beating -- the definition of "clinical death" -- and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died? "After one hour, we couldn't see evidence the cells had died. We thought we'd done something wrong." In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later.

But if the cells are still alive, why can't doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed.

Mitochondria control the process known as apoptosis, the programmed death of abnormal cells that is the body's primary defense against cancer. "It looks to us," says Becker, "as if the cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with oxygen. Something throws the switch that makes the cell die."

With this realization came another: that standard emergency-room procedure has it exactly backward. [...] "We give them oxygen," Becker says. "We jolt the heart with the paddles, we pump in epinephrine to force it to beat, so it's taking up more oxygen." Blood-starved heart muscle is suddenly flooded with oxygen, precisely the situation that leads to cell death. Instead, Becker says, we should aim to reduce oxygen uptake, slow metabolism and adjust the blood chemistry for gradual and safe reperfusion.

A study at four hospitals showed a remarkable rate of success in treating sudden cardiac arrest with an approach that involved, among other things, a "cardioplegic" blood infusion to keep the heart in a state of suspended animation. The study involved just 34 patients, but 80 percent of them were discharged from the hospital alive. In one study of traditional methods, the figure was about 15 percent.

Also,
Tin foil hat prevents brain cancer

Comments

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

Bah, I posted that same article about the cardiac medicine a while back. Pretty cool stuff. I hope hospitals everywhere have been informed of this..

[thette.livejournal.com]

Changing major guidelines after a study of 34 patients? You've got to be kidding me.

I hope researchers everywhere are trying to re-do this study with a whole lot more patients.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

well, you have to wait for people to have a heart attack. and then it has to be in the right place where they have the equipment to test out this procedure. it's kinda unethical to force people to have heart attacks just so they can test this out. even if it was with just 34 patients, 80 percent discharge rate is a HUGE increase. but yes, any study should involve a very large test group. sometimes it's just not available in the location where the study is taking place.

[turnberryknkn.livejournal.com]

(nods nods) It's another aspect of the issues I wrote about in Prometheus Reversed (http://turnberryknkn.livejournal.com/476233.html).

Twenty years ago, the whole field of apoptosis -- the cell death issue that they obliquely refer to here -- was all purely theoretical research. Now we've advanced our understanding far enough that it may potentially change dramatically something as major as the way we handle heart attacks. Which is really a good example of why basic research is so important. The stuff that's esoteric today, twenty years from now becomes a very, very big deal.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

hehe, also, silly lookin hat. but i guess if it fights tumors...