Since I have two family members who actively save lives every day, I thought this was a very interesting study going on:
Basically its a study on exactly how we die - at least dieing from cardiac arrest (lack of oxygen). The interesting thing is they looked at individual cells under a microscope after being oxygen deprived for an hour, and there was little to no difference.
From this study, it looks like cells die when oxygen is resumed to the cells, trigging the mitochondria into their anti-cancer self destruct sequence (yes, AP Biology / BSCS is still sticking with me).
Basically they think now that ER rooms are doing things opposite, by giving people oxygen - where they should be cooling them down and slowing bring them back. In a very small sample study (34 people), the theory saved about 80% of the people - whereas traditional methods saved only about 15%.
Again - just one study, and a very small sample size - but interesting nonetheless.
MSNBC - Newsweek on Changing the way we think of death
2 comments:
hmmm, I guess it's not too surprising when you really think about it...ppl with hypothermia who are "dead" come back through that process. neato article!
Honestly, its amazing how many such notions that have existed since the dawn of time...are actually backwards!
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