X-Message-Number: 2955
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 1994 22:15:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: David W Crippen <crippen+@pitt.edu>
Subject: CRYONICS Treating Shock

I note in my mailbox an elementary diatribe on shock . There is no
accompanying abstract as to why this was sent or what it means so I'll
speculate.  

Seems to be a primer on recognizing hemodynamic perfusion deficits
prospective to freezing a body in the hopes of preserving it.  It would
seem to me that accurately monitoring the shock state would be merely an
academic exercise.   Any body that you might want to freeze would have to
be legally dead before you could initiate the freezing process.  Almost
invariably, there is a variable period of hemodynamic and metabolic wind
down before the moment of clinical death.   If you could legally initiate
the freezing process before the moment of clinical death, there might be
some value to monitoring it, in order to reverse or attenuate it
prospectively. Since you cannot ameliorate this period of "shock" shortly
before death, why bother to monitor it?  You say in your literature that
you are hoping that future bioengineering processes may be able to reverse
cellular damage both from disease and as a result of the freezing process.
 If that were to be the case, than, theoretically that some process could
reverse the detrimental effects of "shock".  Why bother to treat it before
death?

David Crippen, MD,FCCM
Director, Surgical Critical Care
St. Francis MedicalJCenter
Pittsburgh, Pa  


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