With traumatic injuries, timing in treatment can be the difference between life and death. What if surgeons could hit the pause button, giving them precious additional time to treat the wounds? Suspended animation has been featured in films, but could it actually work on humans? The FDA has approved a study to allow surgeons to try to suspend human life later this month.
In Hollywood, suspended animation involves freezing solid (or nearly so), thawing at some point in the future when new medical advances have taken place to treat their conditions. This emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR) technique isn’t quite so extreme, but it will reduce body temperature to 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) by inserting a cannula into the aorta and flushing cold saline into the system.
This will slow the blood flow, which will prevent the body from bleeding out (which can be fatal within minutes). The low temperatures will also slow other biological processes as well.
This state of hypothermia can only be sustained by the human body for about two hours. While this isn’t as dramatic of EPR as some may have expected, that could easily provide enough time for surgeons to perform emergency lifesaving surgery.