X-Message-Number: 14391 Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 22:01:55 -0400 From: Jan Coetzee <> Subject: Cooling Stroke Victims Can Save Cells Cooling Stroke Victims Can Save Cells WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lowering a stroke patient's body temperature by just two degrees Fahrenheit within a few hours of the attack can reduce brain damage and the risk of death, Danish researchers said on Thursday. Other studies have shown that lower temperatures can reduce traumatic damage to cells. And doctors have tried using hypothermia in unconscious, anesthetized stroke patients. But Dr. Lars Kammersgaard and colleagues at Bispebjerg Hospital in Copenhagen wanted to see if the approach would work in a conscious patient. Writing in the American Heart Association journal Stroke, Kammersgaard and colleagues said they cooled down 17 patients by pumping cool air into a thermal blanket to induce mild hypothermia. The patients were kept cool for six hours, and then watched to see how they did. Over six months, the patients who were cooled survived twice as well as those who did not, Kammersgaard said. ``By showing that hypothermia can be successfully used without anesthesia, we have suggested a method of treatment that appears to be low in cost and applicable in most hospitals involved in stroke treatment,'' he said in a statement. ``By reducing the body temperature in the stroke patient, the brain receives cooled blood,'' he added. ``Animal studies involving hypothermia strongly suggest that decreased brain temperature causes less destruction of brain tissue.'' They said more studies will have to be done involving many more people before doctors can say for sure that stroke patients should be cooled off. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14391