X-Message-Number: 11633 Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 19:45:38 -0400 From: Jan Coetzee <> Subject: Surgery Without Blood? Surgery Without Blood? by Laura Spinney Hamsters frozen in suspended animation can be brought back to life after eight hours if their blood is completely removed and replaced with a certain solution. That was the finding presented on April 21 to FASEB's Experimental Biology '99 conference by a group of American scientists who claim that in some cases bloodless surgery could crucially increase the time that surgeons have to operate. Some types of surgery require a patient's heart and circulation to be temporarily stopped. These include many cardiovascular procedures and some neurosurgical ones, especially those used to treat brainstem aneurysms or defects in the basal artery. In order to keep the subject alive in this state of suspended animation, the patient's body is cooled to around 15°Centigrade, which reduces the metabolic needs of his organs. At the same time, the blood flow to the heart is bypassed by a cardiopulmonary machine and his blood is diluted to prevent the clumping that occurs at low temperatures. This allows the surgeon about an hour to complete the operation - after that the patient's circulation must be started again or he will die. But scientists at BioTime, Inc., in Berkeley, California believe they have found a way to increase that operating time, and perhaps even double it. Full report Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11633