X-Message-Number: 22446 From: Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2003 22:46:34 EDT Subject: Hypothermia and assisted "suicide" (First, a bit of background for anyone not following the thread) Switzerland apparently allows assisted suicide, and if a terminal cryonaut were connected to a blood cooling machine and turned it on himself that would seemingly be legal. Thus a sufferer from heart failure or Alzheimer's could deanimate and be frozen before irreprable damage to his body or mind made successful reanimation unlikely, and also avoid the last pain ridden period of life. A few of us are trying to find out more. Now news: Below is one Web article on hypothermia, which says the heart stops around 18C and you then have at least 45 minutes to operate without any damage to the patient. I'd like to find out about the connection between machine and body -- what artery is connected and how -- and about the cost, complexity and availability of the machine. So far I have found no details, but the material below does at least confirm the procedure. Alan Mole http://errc.bsd.uchicago.edu/abstracts/a03.htm Deep Hypothermia in Cardiac Surgery David Jayakar, M.D. University of Chicago ABSTRACT Hypothermia has played an important role in the development of cardiac surgery. Studies conducted in the 1950 s and 60 s reveal the usefulness of hypothermia in cardiovascular surgery. Hypothermia reduces oxygen consumption, which is protective during surgery. Hypothermia may also protect via effects on the enzymes, cells, organs and via reduction of reperfusion injury. The clinical effects of hypothermia are well described, ventricular fibrillation due to hypothermia is known to occur and is a major drawback to the use of hypothermia in many settings. Hypothermia is often combined with hemodiluation for additional clinical benefits. The clinical use of hypothermia includes moderate hypothermia, cooling to 28-32 degrees Centigrade, as well as deep hypothermic circulatory arrest, which cools patient to 18 C with the use of cardiopulmonary bypass pumping. Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest currently allows for surgery as long as 45 minutes with the patient having no blood flow what-so-ever and is followed by complete recovery after re-warming. We plan to further investigate the protective effects of hypothermia using a swine cardiac arrest model and the isolated heart model. These future studies will be described and will create a basis for ongoing research in the resuscitation of patients using hypothermia. We believe improvements in the delivery and use of hypothermia could save lives in the emergency department and the operating suite for patients in critical condition. And here is a very short page that says if you cool the body to 15C the heart just stops, which is very convenient for cardiac surgery. Or , in our case, it would allow death to be declared, leaving cryo-preparers 45 minutes or more (more because they'd be cooling the body further) to replace the blood and start cooling to cryo temperatures. http://www.pavilion.co.uk/lcs/projects/health/1960.htm Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22446