Doctors move forward on research on brain cooling
URBANA -- When Dr. John Wang was a neurosurgeon in training, he noticed an interesting connection between his patients' temperatures and their conditions:
People tended to do better in the morning when their temperatures were lower, than in the evening when their temperatures would rise.
He began to consider the therapeutic effects of cooling specifically on the brain, which is sensitive to temperature changes and whether a cooler brain temperature would benefit patients in those critical hours following a traumatic head injury or stroke.
"It came to me so clear," Wang recalls. "I thought I was the brightest star under the sun. Then I learned that everybody is trying to cool."
The challenge to brain cooling, he soon learned, was finding a way to safely lower the brain temperature without also lowering the body temperature too much, creating potentially dangerous consequences to the heart and immune system and raising the risk of bleeding and infection.
Wang went looking for a solution and found one: a cooling helmet using NASA spin-off technology.
He also found the technology developer, former NASA scientist William Elkins, and began collaborating with him.
Wang, Elkins, and fellow researchers at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria conducted a study using Elkins' cooling helmet on severe head trauma and stroke patients, and published their findings in 2004.
Now Wang and fellow neurosurgeon Dr. William Olivero, who was also involved in the Peoria study, are poised to put brain cooling to a new test on patients in East Central Illinois.
Wang and Olivero, currently at Carle in Urbana, are undertaking a 12-month research project that will test the cooling head cover on Carle head injury and stroke patients.
Their research, funded with a $700,000 U.S. Department of Defense grant, is tentatively set to start in June, and they will have Elkins on board again for technical support.
While the research published in 2004 showed it's possible to cool the brain and how that affects body temperature, Wang says, the next step will be to show how well the cooling helmet works in the realm of emergency medicine.
Basically, "can the paramedics do this in the field," he adds.
So the grant money will be used to equip Carle's air and ground ambulances with cooling head covers purchased through Elkins company and train paramedics to use them on traumatic head injury and stroke patients being transported to Carle's trauma center.
Wang said actually applying the head cover won't involve any complex extra steps for paramedics. In a preliminary run, getting it on the patient took about 90 seconds.
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