ThermaHelm is proud to be assisting the University of Edinburgh

October 2009

ThermaHelm™ technology aims to reduce the immediate and long term effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) as it is a major cause of death and severe disability throughout the world.

TBI leads to 1,000,000 hospital admissions per annum throughout the European Union (EU). Ischaemia (insufficient blood flow to the brain) has a key role in all forms of brain injury and preventing ischaemic (or secondary) injury is at the core of all treatment strategies [1].

The evidence from previous research shows that treatment with therapeutic hypothermia to reduce intracranial hypertension may improve patient outcome after TBI. Improved patient outcome was found in the most recent meta-analysis [2]

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) results in bruising to the brain known as haematomas, contusion, swelling, herniation or compressed basal cisterns. Severe cases can result in the need of Decompressive Craniectomy (cutting into the cranium to relieve pressure).

ThermaHelm is proud to be assisting researchers from the University of Edinburgh in their work with the Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit’s participation in the EuroTherm 3235 Trial currently in progress.

1. Polderman KH. (2008) Induced hypothermia and fever control for prevention and treatment of neurological injuries Lancet 371
1955-1969

2. Peterson K., Carson S., Cairney N. (2008) Hypothermia Treatment for traumatic brain injury: A systematic review and metaanalysis
Journal of Neurotrauma 25 62-71

 

Mom saved by Theraputic Cooling

19th October 2009

"Colonie Emergency Medical Services whisked Haller away to Albany Medical Center. There, doctors pumped ice water into her stomach and chilled her body core in a process called therapeutic cooling, which minimizes brain damage suffered during cardiac arrest by suppressing chemical reactions that cause swelling and inflammation."

Read full article

 

Motorcycle Helmet Performance: Blowing the Lid Off

October 2009

Searching for the truth behind motorcycle helmet design, helmet standards and actual head protection.

How good is your helmet? Will it actually protect your brain in your next crash? Click here to read the article.

 

ER cooling treatment is the norm in Montgomery County, USA

17th October 2009

By Kassia Micek

Cardiac arrest patients have a better chance of survival in Montgomery County, compared to the national average.

Montgomery County emergency rooms are the first in the state to mandate that cardiac arrest patients who regain a heartbeat to undergo induced therapeutic hypothermia, a body cooling treatment to slow damage to brain tissue.

“We’re very good at getting the heart started but the patients don’t survive because of the damage to the brain,” said Dr. Jay Kovar, the Montgomery County Hospital District EMS director and a Conroe Regional Medical Center ER physician. “The focus is to get people back to normal.”

In February 2008, Kovar made the treatment standard protocol for all Montgomery County ERs.

Once a person’s brain is without oxygen for five minutes the damage can be irreversible if it continues, he said.

“We discovered that if we lower the body temperature in the first 24 hours when they have a cardiac arrest, the brain injury is significantly less,” Kovar said.

A patient is given “ice cold” intravenous fluids, and adhesive cooling pads are placed on the arms, legs and chest to drop the body’s temperature to 93 degrees. It takes roughly one hour to drop the body’s temperature, d Kovar said. A normal body temperature is about 98 degrees.

“Lowering the body temperature slows the metabolism,” Kovar said. “There’s other damage that takes places in the recovery stage (than just from the initial injury). The injury that happens is really in that recovery stage.”

If that recovery period can be slowed, less damage occurs to the brain, leading to better longterm results, he said.

After staying “cooled” for 24 hours, the body’s temperature is allowed to return to a normal body temperature, which takes about 12 hours.

Montgomery County sees one to two patients a day who go into cardiac arrest, which is different than a heart attack, Kovar said. All patients who regain their pulse are eligible for induced therapeutic hypothermia and the process is started, although not all patients complete the treatment, he said.

On average, 10 percent of cardiac arrest patients die because the original problem cannot be corrected, 20 percent die because the heart function is too poor and 40 percent die of brain injury, Kovar said.

“If we can get them this treatment we can get more patients to live, and live healthy, normal lives,” Kovar said. “We are dramatically increasing the return to normal function of those patients. We give all patients the benefit of the doubt.

“We’re having to rewrite all we thought we knew.”

With the treatment, 35 percent to 65 percent of patients come back with normal brain function, Kovar said.

The national average of surviving a cardiac arrest is one in 20, Kovar said. In Montgomery County the chance is one in five and the chance someone comes back with normal brain function is one in eight, he said.

“We didn’t invent this,” Kovar said. “ … we just figured out how to make it work.”

 

Department For Transport Publish 2008 Road Casualty Statistics

25th June 2009

The Department for Transport have released the latest statistics regarding road casualties in all forms of transport. There were 21,550 motor cyclist casualties and 6,049 deaths or serious injuries in the UK in 2008.

Click here for their page about it or download the stats directly here.

 

Shoei sell more helmets in Europe than anywhere else 2 years running.

8th June 2009

Helmet manufacturing giant Shoei announced in their '08 finances that they again have sold more helmets to the European market than any other region. That's two years in a row now.

Read more detail about this here, here and here.

 

Doctors Develop Brain-Cooling Helmet - The device reduces brain damage from strokes

8th January 2009

By Tudor Vieru, Science Editor of Softpedia. Source document.

One of the harshest side-effects of a stroke or a cardiac arrest is the death of a large number of neurons and glial cells, which can often lead to other, hard-to-treat complications, making recovery long-lasting and painful. Doctors are now working on a new way of preventing that from happening, and, while the new method does not address the underlying issue – the damage to the heart – it does help reduce some of its effects.

A University of Edinburgh PhD student from the UK is currently testing a “brain-cooling” helmet that works by inducing a mild state of hypothermia to patients.

Taking the old principle of applying cold bandages to the head in order to relieve headaches a few steps further, researchers, the researcher behind this initiative, devised a helmet of sorts that takes advantage of the intricate network of blood vessels on the scalp, which regularly transport blood to the brain.

She argues that cooling the blood before it reaches its destination makes the temperature of the brain go down by as much as 4 °C, to an average level of 33 °C.

This makes neurons take in less oxygen, which is crucial in the first 24 hours after a patient suffered from cardiac arrest or stroke. Doctors have known this for a very long time, and have used cooling blankets on people, to keep their core temperatures low. But this has side-effects, as bodies do not handle this kind of treatment well. The brain helmet keeps the treatment local, for maximum effect.

Other than using cool air streams, as Harris' device does, other doctors also advocate the use of the nose as a conduit for lowering brain temperatures, saying that this is one of the main reasons people grew them in the first place.

Allan Rozenberg, a representative of San Diego, California-based company BeneChill explains that "The nasal cavity is filled with a mass of blood vessels that warm incoming air. Arteries carrying blood to the brain pass in close proximity to this mesh of capillaries, so cooling the nasal cavity also cools the blood that reaches the brain."

No matter how advanced the technology, they key to any of these systems working is a fast response time, meaning that the procedure works best if applied to the patient as soon as possible, after the stroke occurred. According to doctors, people should wear the helmet for about a day, in order to prevent neurons from dying and releasing dangerous toxins within this time frame.

 

Cooling the brain to assist stroke victims

27th February 2006

Summary: We report a case of a 69-year-old white female who presented with a large left internal carotid artery occlusive stroke from a cardiogenic embolus. She was enrolled in an institutional study using a specially designed cooling helmet. Bilateral intracranial pressure (ICP) and temperature probes were placed to determine if there was any differential cooling and ICP compartmentalization between the two hemispheres. We demonstrated a significant temperature gradient between the infarcted and the non-infarcted hemisphere. A significant inter-hemispheric ICP gradient was also observed. We believe that this is the first demonstration of preferential cooling of the infarcted hemisphere over the non-infarcted hemisphere with regional surface hypothermia.

Read More....

 

Cooling helmets may prevent stroke damage

February 6, 2004

Helmets that cool the brain may slow down the spreading damage caused by a stroke, buying precious hours for patients, researchers said today. Such helmets might be used by ambulance crews to stabilise stroke victims while getting them to hospitals for brain-saving treatment, the researchers said.

Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States, with most caused by blood clots cutting off blood flow to the brain. The longer the clot lasts, the worse the damage. Clot-busting treatment can minimise damage but must be given within hours of the stroke.

Cooling patients has been found to help prevent the damage of a heart attack and now two teams told the American Heart Association's annual International Stroke Conference it may work for stroke too. The problem has been how to cool the brain without affecting the rest of the body. Dr Kentaro Yamada of the National Cardiovascular Center in Osaka, Japan and colleagues said they tested a "helmet-type cooling apparatus" on 17 patients with severe stroke.

His team put the helmet on patients three to 12 hours after their strokes and left it on for up to a week. None had serious adverse effects, Yamada said.

A similar United States study used liquid cooling technology developed by NASA for space suits, said Dr Huan Wang, a neurosurgeon at the University of Illinois in Peoria. His team used tiny fibre optic probes inserted in the brain to monitor the temperature. The patients' brains cooled an average of 2.5°C in the first hour without dropping body temperature significantly. Patients tolerated it for an average of six to eight hours before body temperature dropped below healthy levels, they said.