Preventing Brain Death?

Maybe i have seen too many movies. I have noticed that when paramedics and hospital staff tries to save a dying patient, they primarily look to keep the Heart from stopping. Even if the person has no pulse, he can still live as long as the brain functions. In one of the semi recent developments i saw on the Technology section of the forum, there was a case where patient was hooked up to a device that acted like a heart but produced no pulse.

Would i be right to assume that as long as the brain receives sufficient oxygen and nutrients through blood, it would remain alive?

I would like to assume that if you tap into the vein that delivers blood to the brain and provide it with pumped blood (Donor blood?) you could keep the brain alive. A problem would be doing this in time to save a critical patient... Unless the process could be automated with a use of a technological device that would do the job of injecting the needle and adjusting the blood flow in the right spot. I am thinking of something the size of a defibrillator.

My next question would is, that assuming that kind of technique works, would it be more efficient to use it and not worry about keeping the patient's hear beating and worrying about bleeding out? Surgeons could take the time they need to fix the damage.

I am ignorant and need education fellow ATS members. Teach me~

Would i be right to assume that as long as the brain receives sufficient oxygen and nutrients through blood, it would remain alive?

No, brain activity can cease for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with oxygen deprivation. However, if the brain itself has not been damaged your theory should hold true for most cases.

a reply to: Heruactic

It's a lot simpler to get the heart going again. Or lacking that in the short term, to move blood by good quality chest compressions and a bag/mask.

Why. Well, there's a lot of reasons. But consider how that circulation works. First, any vessel that's carrying blood away from the heart is an artery. Vessels carrying blood back to the heart are veins.

Now, you don't have one vein carrying blood to the brain. You don't have any at all - it would be an artery. But there are multiple arteries carrying blood to the brain. If you were trying to do this, you'd probably want to perfuse them all, but lets say you just take the two biggest ones - the left and right common carotids.

So, your guy is down and not breathing and has no heart beat. You've got just about a minute to:

1) find both common carotids
2) insert an introducer into each
3) use a dilator to open the artery
4) do a small cutdown on the skin
5) insert a balloon catheter into the artery and inflate it to keep the blood going to the head and not back the other way
6) do this on both arteries
7) hook pressure tubing to your device.
8) prime the pump and tubing with blood of the correct type - where you'll get that is a question.
9) you've got to return the blood to the venous system, so now do a central line insert

And all that will take about 30 minutes. The guy's dead.

Even if you got it going, you've got no oxygenation or CO2 removal. Just a pump. So you need a membrane oxygenator, called an ECMO. It's about the size of a refrigerator. And you'll need to do ABGs every few minutes to keep it calibrated.

Let's say you got all that done. In the meantime, while you were perfusing his brain, his spinal cord died. So he's a paraplegic. And his kidneys died a few minutes later, so he's on dialysis. Etc.

In the end, it's a lot easier to get him jump started on his internal systems.

eta: you're also doing all this in extremely unsterile conditions in poor lighting, if it's in the field. So the guy's going to have some godawful infections to boot...oh, and you're going to start getting widespread systemic clotting in a few minutes, so even if you restart him, he's pretty much nothing but a big blood clot in all his blood vessels. Nothing's going to work ever again.

a reply to: Heruactic

Tissues will die without an oxygenated blood supply. The brain is more susceptible, but all tissues will be affected by a lack of circulation.

Think A-B-C: Airway, breathing, and circulation.

So along with replacing the heart with a mechanical pump, the blood still needs to be oxygenated, either through respiration or other means.

Lastly, I am not certain what the long-term effects on the heart muscle if it is not pumping. It was designed for continuous operation.

I lost my Dad 2 months ago to Heart/Lung failure. Not sure if the heart gave or the lungs. He was ran off the road on I20 in Louisiana and panicked him so bad the his heart rate elevated beyond that the lungs could supply. I have put many hours of thought in to this and concluded what Bedlam stated. Its jump the current system in time or say pleasant good byes. I can not for see technology saving anyone in short order without pre implanted precautionary equipment. Even with future tech. And, I am a visionary. I applaud you for the out of the box thinking. This is how progress occurs. Ask Da Vinci.

I think that an at risk patient could be tapped at the heart with quick connects and an oxygen/pump device (think recent crystal developments that store high concentrates of oxygen) that could cover the entire system at the hearts inlet and outlet. This still doesn't really cover pro longed state of stopped heart muscle, but you may be on to something. Personally I prefer DNR over the consequences of necessitation.

Just read over my last 2 posts. Sitting down the beer and making final post adjustments accordingly.

I happened to die twice this year and the first time was in the trauma room in our Local hospital.
They worked on my heart and that is the only reason I am typing this silly post at the moment.

As a poster above mentioned (Bedlam) time is everything and believe me you they don't waste a second on zapping you to the next county because that is what happened.

20 seconds in the Emergency department I was dead and 10 seconds later I was alive but swearing my head off. :-)

Your questions have merit though, and perhaps the science/doctor community know more than I or anyone else here for that matter.
It's just a matter of time till they can perfect just what you are asking.
This makes me think of Princess Dianna's situation if to be believed......I read that her heart was torn loose and if true what you are asking in your OP might be of importance.
Great thread for thinking on and thanks for posting it.
Regards, Iwinder

Keeping the brain oxygenated while the heart is not pumping will not do you much good. Consider the fact that the brain is just one organ, keeping only the brain 'alive' will do nothing to help your liver, kidney, intestines, etc. Also consider that the heart supplies itself (obviously) with blood, and if the heart isn't pumping blood through its coronary arteries, you will have a massive myocardial infarction (heart attack), and die. So, although I applaud the OP for at least using his mind to think outside of the box, your scenario just wouldn't work physiologically speaking,

originally posted by: Heruactic
Maybe i have seen too many movies. I have noticed that when paramedics and hospital staff tries to save a dying patient, they primarily look to keep the Heart from stopping.

About 74 or more years ago,



But you are correct, keeping the heart from stopping is a primary concern in a hospital. Brain trauma though is still something that needs to be guaged. These are different ends to be met.

I wonder what would happen if we recreated a clone of the brain to the T. Is the brain the only part of the body that contains consciousness? I read where transplant patients have residual memories of donors. I will find a source article if need be.

I am new, but I hope to bring critical thought to the table in my Red neck way. Cheers guys.

Good bye ATS. Short but sweet. I am an um productive thread killer. Sorry OP.
My account creation was a mistake. 5 years of read only served me well.

a reply to: Heruactic

A long time back now I tried to think of a way to create a real cryostasis chamber, now cold slow's the metabolism down reducing oxygen and nutrient consumption but at certain temperature's the electro-chemical reaction in the cell's actually stop's and we currently can not simply make in intact but dead cell live though limited success has been had with electrical shock's restarting some of the biological process.

Bacteria do not have this problem as they can often survive far harsher condition's than our much larger cell's and even become dormant in spore form almost indefinitely.

One of the other problem's of low temperature is the formation of ice crystal's which can do irreparable damage to cell's but low temperature surgery has been pioneered and shown to be usefull but only at above freezing temperature's because of this ice crystalization problem.

A number of solution's have been suggested including a biological anti freeze as is naturally found in arctic fish and some mammal's allowing the mammal's to survive being partially frozen and hybernate.

Here was my solution (basically inhibiting ice formation at normally freezing temperature), I envisioned a set of very fine piezo crystal tipped needle's that would penetrate the entire body and created an oscilation tuned to prevent the formation of ice crystal's in the localized region around each needle at lower temperature's and thus enable the temperature of the patient/subject to be taken near to the death temperature threshhold virtually shutting a body down and almost completely stopping metabolic activity but of course the number or needles would have been overly prohibitive with there own damage problem's to internal organ's etc, still more modern noise projection technology may be an alternative solution to this problem.

If so and if the noise (Resonance tuned to prevent the formation of ice crystal's) could adapt to a robotic surgery technique in real time during an operation on the immobilized and static patient/subject who/that is vertually then suspended then complex surgary/procedure's beyond what is now possible could be performed at leisure by the operator's of such machinary.

If a patient could be rapidly thus suspended then the damage to the rest of the body and also the brain would be delayed perhap's long enough to solve the critical situation and save the life even preventing damage from ruptured blood vessels in the brain until micro surgery could be used to repair what could be repaired, remember though we now know that memory may also be stored in the heart which is the second most complicated set or nerves outside of the brain and the spine and this may be one reason why some heart donors sometime's have telling personality changes.

My interest was in long duration survival and both storage of living army's/population's in case of an atomic/environmentally catastrophic war or celestial impact and of course very long duration space travel, the downside is the cell usually repairs it's dna regularly fixing error's as it goes on but such long duration would slow this down and increase relative to the rate of metabolic function the amount or background and other radiation damage to the chromosone's so I discounted it on those ground's but for shorter operations and life support scenario's it may still be a viable area of research for someone with the resources and necessary expertise to pursue.

may not work for trama seconds count than and i think the odds are restarting a heart are better than this in a 5 min window

but a fasinating idea

i have read dissociatives and alcohol administered after hard blows or lack of oxegen can reduce brain damage

ironical both cause brain damage aswell if over used

theres many many things dissociatives are being looked at for amazing drugs if we find the right one
i wont list what dissociatives are google will help ud be amazed tho from hard street drugs to otc
there used alot and are being studied for alot of things

the world of human health is complex and fasinating

im always picking my brothers brain on bioligy hes got a degree in it lol dosent use it tho loves phisical labor

most recent interesting fact fungus is very close to us celularly thus why fungal infections are so hard to cure

Thanks for all the great replies.

When i put up this thread, i was operating under assumption that individuality is contained within the brain. If the whole body fails, by keeping the brain alive you could preserve a life until other solutions can be devised, like cloning or cyborg bodies. Yes, i am into science fiction. I am aware that the tech is decades away, but hey. If you can keep a brain alive that long, in theory, (in a coma). Putting it in another body, mechanical or biological would still add years of life to the (otherwise) dead person.