Penn doctors are giving some patients a second chance at life.
School of Medicine professor Lance Becker and his team are researching a medical procedure that can reduce the amount of brain damage caused when a patient's heart stops. Even a 10-minute cutoff to oxygen can cause irreversible injury to the brain, said Vinay Nadkarni, who teaches at the Hospital of the University Pennsylvania.
When the heart stops, cells continue to die, and there is potential for fatal brain damage to occur.
Cooling the body, however, can reduce these risks.
The potentially helpful procedure - a mild form of hypothermia - involves lowering the patient's body temperature by about three degrees Celsius.
Body temperature is normally 98 degrees Farenheit, but cooling it lowers it to 92 degrees, which decreases injury.
Doctors cool down patients by injecting ice-cold saline through their arms. Patients are also wrapped in cooling blankets or cooling vests so that their skin is chilled simultaneously.
The procedure has been around for a while, but Becker and his team are working on speeding up and simplifying the process.
"The key is for the brain to be cooled," Nadkarni said. In order for that to occur, the bloodstream flowing to the brain needs to be cooled first.
So why does cooling benefit patients?
Medical experts say one possible theory is cells don't need as much oxygen when cooled and as a result suffer less damage at a time when oxygen is unavailable.
Like many medical procedures, this lifesaving remedy also has its share of risks.
Potential complications include an alteration in blood-sugar levels and the suppression of the immune system, possibly leading to secondary infections, Nadkarni said.
However, with improved survival rates and better recovery of brain functions, "the risk-benefit ratio is clearly in favor of cooling," Massachusetts General Hospital trauma surgeon Hasan Alam said.
The treatment is particularly pertinent to society today because of the prevalence of heart attacks.
"Cardiac arrest is an enormous problem. It is linked to the deaths of over 300,000 Americans each year," Emergency Medicine professor Benjamin Abella said.
Unfortunately, not everyone is eligible for this treatment.
Patients who have potential problems with blood clotting would be at risk if they were to receive this procedure because cooling negatively affects blood clotting, Becker said.
He added that the chilling process needs to take place earlier - ideally, before the cardiac arrest - and become faster.
"I predict that we are going to get better and better ways of cooling a patient so that it becomes less time intensive, less messy, more automated so that it can be done just easier," Becker said.
