You aren't as dead as you think
I was pretty sure that without oxygen, cells die. But some research is now indicating that cells do shut down without blood flow, but they don't immediately die. Unfortunately, the mechanisms we use to restart the heart after a heart attack may be what actually kills the patient. Read more about this intriguing idea here.
11 comments:
Its really all so fascinating about the cells and all. I never really considered the lifespan cell after a cardiac arrest. The research to develop something new or different to treat the body is revolutionary. This definitely makes the public aware of the complexity behind reviving an individual. So often we too have fallen victim to the misconception of what it means to be physically dead. At what point do we give up on revival. So many times doctors declare someone dead but based on what criteria. Before we are capable changing this we need to educate the public.
Anyway to get well rounded i looked this up
http://medlineplus.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/heartattack.html
Eduardo 9416
Kenny 7240
Wow this is crazy and groundbreaking because this totally goes against everything we've taught for the past few decades. This is kind of ironic that I had to be CPR certified to work at the ARC and now most of those skills aren't needed or have been disproven. I guess thats just the way science works, sadly through trial and error. Think of all the lives that could've been saved.
Anyways, some questions that came to mind was how long will it take to do enough research to convince the public that we're doing the wrong process. I hope it can be figured out quickly.
Wow I was looking for articles on digg.com and this article was on there.
interesting
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050222_synesthesia.html
Michael Chon 3702
This article is actually quite alarming. If the cells actually do survive long after the heart has stopped, then think about how many people have died due to improper methods of treatment. I personally hope that, if this is true, more and more hospitals and doctors utilize this life-saving method of resuscitation. It has been pretty much cemented into the minds of people today that the defribrillator paddles and epinphrine are the only cure for a stopped heart. Countless movies and TV shows depict these tools in the emergency room. If the traditional method for restarting the heart is changed, then I think the hospital dramas are going to change drastically. It'll go something like, "His heart has stopped!" "It's ok...we'll save him in a couple hours." Anyway, if this article's claims are true, then the medical world might want to more closely scrutinize their other traditional methods of saving lives in hopes that they find better ways of doing their jobs.
This site is advocating the traditional method of restarting a heart attack patient's heart. It also includes other methods of treatment. http://www.cardiologychannel.com/heartattack/treatment.shtml
Silvestre Uribe
3714
This article is really cool because it deals with how some cells and the body work even after a person has been dead. This is good to know because now a person can be given more medication and more support even if the doctor has said that the person is dead, may not be dead. Furthermore, this article can lead to the discovery of new ideas which can lead to better techniques of helping a person with a heart attack. Thus, with more research there will be a higher probability of survival.
Here is an article for support of the surviving the heart attack.
http://heartdisease.about.com/cs/heartattacks/a/MIlate.htm
I always thought that being dead meant your heart stopped, but not that this new development has arisen it is scary to think that the ways to revive people are actually killing them. I have always thought about what it means to be an organ donor and just to think of all of these people that were not able to come back after being defibrilated they might have still been alive if oxygen had not killed their cells. When a person is pronounced dead all of his cells might still be alive, but because they were an organ donor they have already been proclaimed dead.
I found an interesting article on another new discovery: New Ways to Heal Broken Bones that reminded me of this article.
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/396_bone.html
Loren 3875
Sami Cho
8219
I thought this article was very interesting to read because my whole view on reviving the heart and CPR changed. I always watch those shows with like doctor stuff on it, (like Grey's Anatomy and E.R.)and I know those shows aren't accurate but they give a general idea of what happens at a hospital. When I saw the people using the paddles to revive a heart, I thought that would be the best way to bring someone back to life. So as I read this article that that kind of CPR will actually kill someone really shocked me and made me aware of the dangers of the CPR. I hope that they do find a solution because I would hate to find myself in a situation where my heart starts working, and I have a chance to live, but because they used the paddles to revive me, I die. I thought this article gave me a better understanding at how the heart works and how the blood cells aren't actually dead when the heart stops pumping blood.
I found this interesting site about how to survive a heart attack when alone:
http://www.karinya.com/cpr.htm
Andrew 3840
It's hard to believe that the way doctors have been treating heart attacks is wrong and there doing things backwards in a way. It's also hard to belive that are cells go into a hiberation, rather then dying. This article is a great beacon for helping heart attack victims. Too many people are dying from heart attacks. That is how I lost my Grandfather. I feel weird now, that if a doctor calls someone dead, is he really dead? Now I really feel like those ER shows are all fake. This article had a lot of stuff that we have covered in class. I was able to keep up with the medical lingo. It's kind of hard to believe that we should decrease the oxygen that we give a heart attack victim. Someone said it right when they said everything we have learned is completely different, then what this article has taught us.
I came across a little article that says drinking helps heart attack victims. I guess anything can happen. http://www.jointogether.org/news/research/summaries/2001/report-alcohol-may-aid-heart.html
Justin, 6844
I thought this article was VERY interesting. It made me realize the different aspects of "dead" and that what doctors may be doing to save you is actually killing you. I never really thought about the term "dead" on a cellular level. I just always assumed that when a person was dead, their heart has stopped and they were no longer living. But this article shows how cells are still alive for up to an hour or more after lack of oxygen. It's kind of scary to know that you're still alive even after people think you're dead. It also makes me worried that the techniques doctors use to revive a patient is what kills the patient. Hopefully the research can come up with a much more safe way to revive people and make it a common technique throughout the world to revive patients.
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=13511
Nicholas 9969
It's interesting how we have so many fundamental misconceptions about basic biological processes. Studies like these convince me that humans were only designed to live 30-40 years. While breakthroughs like these may help save plenty of lives in emergency rooms around the world, aren't those people destined to die from heart failure no matter what? Aren't many of the health problems witnessed in Western countries due in part to the advances in medicine? Afterall, why exercise when you can just get liposuction and the chances of successful recucitation are ever-increasing? While I support using these techniques on people who genuinely deserve them, it seems to me that so many people neglect their health to a point that, in a state of nature, they wouldn't be able to survive. When it comes to health, I believe that prevention is the best cure.
Anyway, here's some further insight into how this technique works:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16534333
Carole 2034
I can’t believe that for so long, it was thought that cells died five or so minutes after the heart stopped beating when that’s not true. It’s good that researchers found that out later than never but they still should have researched to make sure of a “certain” thing. It’s actually amazing how the cells live up to an hour after the heart stops beating, but the craziest part about it is that by trying to revive the heart with paddles to give it oxygen, it leads to cell death. I hope they find a solution to this problem soon and save more lives than lose them.
this link answers why cells die without oxygen.
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0122781/science/whydie.htm
This article is fascinating. I have always been told that cells die when they lose oxygen and so therefore they die. I never would have thought that they actually die when we introduce them to new oxygen when they have already gone into the oxygen conservation stage. I hope we can come up with some amazing medical breakthroughs as a result of this new research so that doctors can save the lives of people who would have otherwise died when being treated with the old method. I wonder though how they are going to be able to save the call tissues without causing brain damage to the patient from loss of oxygen.
http://www.new-cancer-treatments.org/Theory/CancerTheory.html
Stephen 2068
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