Hiker dies on Mt. Ranier hike brought back to life after heart stopped for 45 minutes.

[triron]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/14/hiker-mount-ranier-whiteout-dies-er-brought-back-to-life

"He had a pulse when he arrived at the hospital but soon his heart stopped, said Dr Jenelle Badulak, one of the first to start treating him.

“He died while he was in the ER, which gave us the unique opportunity to try and save his life by basically bypassing his heart and lungs, which is the most advanced form of artificial life support that we have in the world,” Badulak said.

The medical team repeatedly performed CPR and hooked Knapinksi up to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, which pumped blood out of his body into a heart-lung machine that removed carbon dioxide, and then back into the body.

Knapinksi’s heart remained stopped for 45 minutes. After the doctors restarted it, the medical team spent the night beside him to make sure he continued to stabilize."

[BusyBeingBest]

1. Hypothermia really helped him.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. If I'd read this in a different newspaper, I'd probably be calling BS

It shakes up my notions about cellular death, for sure.

[Turin_C3PO]

3. I think

that ECMO machine prevented cellular death. I wonder why they can’t use that machine every time to save people whose hearts have stopped? I’m sure there’s some good medical reason.

[BusyBeingBest]

5. Depends on why their hearts have stopped--in this guy's case, he

was probably healthy, with sound organs, and just almost died of hypothermia--that sort of preserved his organs for a while until he could be slowly revived at the hospital. If you're normal body temperature and succumb to a disease state or clot or stroke, it likely wouldn't work.

[Turin_C3PO]

6. Another thing

I’ve wondered about those machines is if they could be used on people who have emphysema or cystic fibrosis given that those people die from either too much CO2 in the blood or too little oxygen. Could someone like that be on an ECMO permanently or there something preventing this? Sorry for the dumb questions but it has me wondering.

[BusyBeingBest]

7. I was a nurse a pretty long time ago, and I'm not that familiar

with ECMO, but it is very hard on the body to be hooked up to something like that (if it's similar to a bypass machine). You can have your brain showered with small clots, it messes with your blood pressure and organ perfusion (especially on kidneys), it is run by anesthesiologists and perfusionists (specialized staff) and is very intensive care, I would imagine. I don't think it would be practical for people who have underlying lung problems with gas exchange due to a chronic disease state. It's more a last-ditch effort to buy time to correct a correctable problem. It's why they're using it for covid patients.

[Turin_C3PO]

8. Ok, that makes sense.

Thanks!

[BusyBeingBest]

4. Not much different than undergoing heart bypass surgery--

a machine does the gas exchange for you while your heart is being operated on. Being super-chilled/hypothermic on the mountain slowed his metabolism down so that waste products didn't build up as quickly to kill off his brain cells and heart muscle.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

9. The headline makes it sound like his blood wasn't circulating for 45 minutes, when it was.

[Sneederbunk]

10. If you die you are dead. Otherwise it is a near-death experience.

[abqtommy]

11. Cold has a direct affect on survivability. I've read about miraculous recoveries of persons

who were rescued in cold water after extended times. It is amazing but not something I'm
ready to put to the test.

[Blue Owl]

12. A modern-day Lazarus