High-tech hypothermia
The treatment and care of heart patients is always evolving, often dramatically, and one therapy in particular now may help cardiac arrest survivors in central Alabama.
Emergency departments in the U.S., Europe and Australia have been experimenting with a treatment called therapeutic hypothermia (TH) over the last several years.
For reasons that aren't clearly understood, the induced hypothermia -- or a rapid cooling of the body -- reduces brain damage and reduces the brain's demand for oxygen. That helps preserve the patient's neurological function once the body recovers.
One example: A patient who suffered cardiac arrest in the University of Alabama at Birmingham emergency department was successfully revived -- after 90 minutes of chest compressions -- and then was treated with TH. He eventually made an amazing recovery with no neurological deficits. His story was reported in The Birmingham News and on area TV stations in early 2010.
Dr. Henry Wang, associate professor and vice chair for research in the emergency medicine department at UAB, talked to the media at the time about that patient's remarkable recovery, and about UAB's work with TH.
In early September, Wang presented a session on therapeutic hypothermia to a large room packed with physicians, nurses and other medical staff at Baptist Medical Center South, who were getting ready to start their own TH program.
Dr. Paul Moore, a cardiologist with Montgomery Cardiovascular Associates, attended Wang's presentation, and afterward said that his colleagues were very interested in therapeutic hypothermia. He called the therapy "very promising."
Moore related a story about a man who collapsed on a street in London. After he was resuscitated, he was treated with TH, and recovered. He became Moore's patient after he was transferred to Alabama.
Moore said he doesn't think it will be difficult to get a patient's family on board with the treatment. Families have come to expect new medical technologies, he added.
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