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  • > As the patient's temperature approached 22 °C (72 °F), low-frequency and low-amplitude sinusoidal electrical deflections were noted on his electrocardiogram.

    Dunno about you, but this does things to me.

    by ggdG
  • They’re not dead until they’re warm and dead.
  • I remember that cryogenesis was deemed viable in the 80ies but essentially surface area is your enemy. Anything larger than a cat can’t be resurrected. It’s pretty bizarre really, they froze mice and microwaved them back to life.
  • I'd be curious to read about 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 year follow-up.

    Party pooper warning.

    I'm afraid I don't have rose tinted glasses, due to personal experience with a family member with TBI (accident at age 16, 3 weeks in a coma). The aftereffects are profoundly destabilizing to his environment. I sometimes have quite a dark view of people's need to be a rescuer and celebrate the "alive!", when they don't have to deal with the next 40-60 years of living...

  • Reminds of Chris Lemons, who survived for 30+ minutes without oxygen at the bottom of the North Sea. Cold water (and experience, like staying calm) probably played a large part. He went back to diving a few weeks after!

    They made a movie about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Breath_(2019_film)

  • "Survival" here being, of course, not a black-and-white thing:

        > Outcome and Follow-Up
        > On day 59, the boy was discharged to inpatient neurorehabilitation. At 6-month follow-up, he was giving short commands, standing without support, riding a tricycle, eating soft foods, and relearning simple tasks. Peripheral neuromuscular weakness continued to improve.
  • That is incredible. 2.5 hours underwater, 1.5 hours of CPR. They were instructed not to start rewarming him until he could be given more comprehensive treatment at a hospital. They list 'death' as a differential diagnosis...

    He didn't come out unscathed though. They describe his progress:

    > At 6-month follow-up, he was giving short commands, standing without support, riding a tricycle, eating soft foods, and relearning simple tasks. Peripheral neuromuscular weakness continued to improve.

    which is quite limited for an 8-year old, but remarkable considering the circumstances.

  • Something similar happened recently in Norway. A tourist was found severely cold in the mountains, in a storm where extracting him took hours. After a while hypothermia got to him, his heart stopped, and only 8 hours later they got it starting again, was technically dead for 20 hours. In this case, it looks to have gone well with the person afterwards.

    They say you're not dead until you're warm and dead.

    News article https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/vestland/nye-tal_-turgaare...

    Recount of the story https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/vestland/xl/turgaaren-var-...

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