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An amazing bit of weird medical science came to the help of newborn baby Edward Ives, who was stripped, wrapped in an ice blanket and left to freeze for four days. On purpose. By doctors. And it worked.
Little Edward was suffering from a heart condition, which was diagnosed in the womb. A routine scan found that his pulse was racing away at over 300 beats a minute, as the result of a condition known as supraventricular tachycardia. He was immediately popped out of mummy’s tummy for emergency treatment.
The seemingly barbaric treatment involved sedating Edward and wrapping him in a cooling blanket for four days, which his horrified parents said made it look “like he was dead.” This odd cold immersion tricked his heart into working normally again for reasons we won’t pretend to understand, and he was gradually defrosted and eventually allowed to go home. [Metro]
Image credit: Cold baby from Shutterstock
Cool! I’m gonna try this on my cat!
Can we shave it first, you know, just for the sheer hell of it?
Your comment coupled with your picture creeps me the fuck out!
Excellent, Excellent, thats another one this month, only gotta disconcert 3 more people before the end of February and i’ll earn me a novelty Zippo lighter in the shape of David Tennants earlobe.
Yeah, why the hell not?
Not exactly frozen. Just cooled down lots.
They do a similar thing (invoking hypothermia) with cardiac bypasses for open heart surgery by passing the blood through a cooling device. This reduces the oxygen requirements and blood flow. Without it most heart surgeries would not be possible.
It is also used in brain injuries as it can stops the brain from bleeding and stops swelling which can cause brain damage. This also gives the surgeons more time to perform their operation.
The first thing that came to my mind when reading this post was “where does it says frozen?”.
Same principle applies for extremely pre-term babies – they get scalp cooling, which protects the brain.
An interesting similar story – back in 2010 there was a Horizon documentary about cooling patients into ‘suspended animation’ to allow surgeons more time to operate in difficult and life-threatening procedures.
Body temperature is usually 37 degrees. Normally if the core temperature drops below 22 degrees, the cells go into apoptosis (programmed cell death) and you die of hypothermia… but, as they found, if you cool the body quickly enough (by replacing your blood with ice-cooled saline) you can get down to as low as 15 degrees without the cells dying.
At this temperature, your heart stops, your tissues stop functioning, and your brain produces no electrical signals.
For all intents and purposes – you are dead.
Then, they do the operation, stitch you back up, rapidly reheat you by putting your warmed blood back in, and you ‘come back to life’…
Incredible, but terrifying stuff!
I would not have liked to be the first patient to undergo that! amazing stuff.
First patient was discovered by accident in a skiing accident, i watched it on discovery or stg like that… if i remember correctly, a lady (maybe doctor as well) with her doctor friend skiing, and she by accident goes over a soft spot in a river and ice breaks she goes under tick ice with water flowing i think, she gets carried a bit and stuck under a tick ice sheet… rescue comes some 40 mins later, she is flown to nearby hospital, but body temp way below normal levels, no heart beat, but by accident, she is warmed, and her heart starts some 1-2 hrs after she was considered dead… but some form of miracle hypothermia saved her life, and this was trialed on a brain tumor patient in a program called “kill me to cure me” i think on discovery
cool and miraculous if u think of it… probably can be used for hibernation in long space flights in future…
you beat me to bringing up the exact same episode of Horizon
I have to agree it truly is an amazing thing.
This is standard procedure in a lot of heart conditions. Lower temperature to preserve brain function.
Yup. My son had heart surgery at 8 weeks. He struggled to make it through the first night – his heart was racing (over 160bpm) but his blood pressure plummeted to a dangerously low level. He was saved by a hypothermic coma, taken down to 30 degrees for 24 hours to take pressure off cardiac function.