Hypoxia During Sudden Cardiac Arrest

[DonRocks]

I was literally just reading this article:

"Sudden Cardiac Arrest May Have Warning Signs After All" by Mary Brophy Marcus on cbsnews.com

Sudden Cardiac Arrest results in death 90% of the time it occurs.

100% of people who ever died, died from hypoxia, i.e. lack of oxygen to the brain (that is essentially the definition of death).

Right now, CPR is the method we use to desperately try and pump recycled oxygen to the brain.

It just popped into my head whether or not it's possible to forget the heart while it's not working, and directly inject oxygen into the brain. Okay, now before you start laughing, I understand that it's not as simple as sticking a valve into somebody's ear and blowing oxygen in - the capillaries send blood (and therefore oxygen) into the tiny recesses of the brain, keeping it alive, but I wonder if there is some possible "method" to deliver oxygen into vital portions of the brain *other* than via our vascular system - some sort of injection that can keep critical components of the brain living long enough to get to the hospital. Sort of like immersing someone in ice after they've received serious spinal trauma to prevent swelling from killing them in the first 24 hours (I'm a big proponent of this theory, by the way - lowering body temperature can do near-miraculous things). 

Maybe there's some type of delayed-release "oxygen canister" that can be connected to the vessels that lead to the brain, and when the heart stops working, you push a button, and oxygen starts flowing through those vessels into vital portions of the brain, long enough to keep it alive until help can be found.

Alternatively, I'm thinking of a Hot Wheels Turbo Charger (remember those things from the 1960s?) - a needle blowing out high-pressured oxygen can be inserted into the toughest artery in the human body, and activated with a canister of oxygen when needed, using the concepts of fluid dynamics (both oxygen and blood are fluids) to "turbo-charge" the (now oxygen-enriched) blood through the vascular system. This wouldn't need to be directly below the brain, but anywhere in the body where the artery is least likely to rupture, i.e., whichever one has the most durable walls. I don't even know if it would make it through the heart valves (that's how little I know about the human heart).

I have no answers, and I don't even know if any of this stuff is physically possible, but I'm wondering if anyone has even thought about it before. Maybe there's some "alternate path" to the brain, like performing an emergency tracheotomy with a steak knife when someone's throat swells shut.

Okay, you can start calling me crazy now, but this doesn't sound any loonier to me than laser eye surgery when I first heard about some Russian doctor "curing" people of being nearsighted about thirty years ago on "60 Minutes" - operating on several patients per *hour* - and quite often, nothing in this world gets done until someone thinks of something disruptive.

[Al Dente]

U of MD appears to be working on it:

Emergency Oxygenation Kit

[DonRocks]

On 12/24/2015 at 1:10 PM, Al Dente said:

U of MD appears to be working on it:

Emergency Oxygenation Kit

Interesting, but something still has to get the oxygen from the lungs to the brain (that's why I really don't understand this) - if the heart's not pumping, I don't understand how it can work, although I suppose these folks have thought it out better than I have.

You can breathe just fine during a heart attack; you just can't get anything pumped to the brain, so I don't understand what this thing does unless you can't breathe. I was talking about when the pump (i.e., heart) fails; not when the airway is obstructed - but they seem to mention that as well.

That said, I don't think you can continuously pump gas (i.e., oxygen) into the vascular system because it would be an ever-increasing volume of fluid; unless the lungs were somehow able to exhale, you'd literally explode from the inside.

[NiceDocter]

Circulation not only delivers oxygen but other vitals chemicals such as glucose , ions, etc not to mention taking AWAY waste products. In direct conflict with your thought is the newly recommended CPR procedure not involving any breaths given to a person in cardiac arrest but rather just constant chest compressions (which probably does move some air in and out of the lungs anyhow).  

[DonRocks]

On 12/30/2015 at 4:40 AM, NiceDocter said:

Circulation not only delivers oxygen but other vitals chemicals such as glucose , ions, etc not to mention taking AWAY waste products. In direct conflict with your thought is the newly recommended CPR procedure not involving any breaths given to a person in cardiac arrest but rather just constant chest compressions (which probably does move some air in and out of the lungs anyhow).  

This video makes the newly recommended, "hands-only" CPR look *incredibly* simple, and more importantly, EASY TO REMEMBER IN A PANIC SITUATION. I recommend watching the whole thing.

You push directly on the center of the rib cage, right? Right in the middle of the nipples? Or slightly lower than that? Either way, it seems important to press on the rib cage and not below that.

I also recommend trying out your own beat with the video. Start clapping your hands and singing to yourself before the song comes on - in my case, I was going a little too slow and needed to speed up. In real life (pun on reel life), if you err (pun on air), err on the slightly fast side, and absolutely err on the *hard* (pun on heart) side in order to compress the heart. A few minutes of this could get tiring and cause forearm cramps, so hopefully, a group of people will sing and clap for you, and someone can help you push if you get tired. 

[NiceDocter]

If you lock your elbows and let your body weight do the pushing its a lot easier.  Easy to remember the song Stayin Alive and that drum beat. Kind of like the drum beat at the start of Surfin Safari simulates...........what? Anyone know?

[NiceDocter]

Still waiting to see guesses what the drum beat at the start of Surfin Safari is likened to???????  If anyone even bothers to guess I will post the answer which I think you will find interesting!!!!   

 

[sheldman]

7 hours ago, NiceDocter said:

Still waiting to see guesses what the drum beat at the start of Surfin Safari is likened to???????  If anyone even bothers to guess I will post the answer which I think you will find interesting!!!!   

The tempo for CPR on a baby?

[DonRocks]

9 hours ago, NiceDocter said:

Still waiting to see guesses what the drum beat at the start of Surfin Safari is likened to???????  If anyone even bothers to guess I will post the answer which I think you will find interesting!!!!   

Hmm, I don't know what it simulates, but it goes like this when the drums kick in, all four of these lines taking the exact same amount of time:

1                       2

1           2          3          4

1 ta-da-2 ta-da-3 ta-da-4 ta-da-

1 ta-da-2 ta-da-3 ta-da-4 ta-da-

So it doubles in speed, then it would quadruple in speed, except there's a 16th rest before each ta-da.

I assume, given the topic, that it has something to do with an EKG?

On 12/30/2015 at 5:30 AM, DonRocks said:

You push directly on the center of the rib cage, right? Right in the middle of the nipples? Or slightly lower than that? Either way, it seems important to press on the rib cage and not below that.

Nobody ever answered this: You push *on the breast-bone*, correct? It seems like "on the bone" makes more sense, as you want to be directly over the heart. Are the nipples a good reference point for where to push - right in-between them?

At 0:52 in the above video, it looks like they're right in-between the nipples, pushing from the side (elbows locked, using body weight).

I assume at this moment, you don't worry about breaking a rib, as that would be a small price to pay for "Stayin' Alive."

This is all-the-more reason to have a second, back-up, person ready - compressing the chest on the breast-bone is hard work, and 100 beats-per-minute might tire someone out pretty quickly. 

[NiceDocter]

Tradition has it that the begining drum beats simulate muscular contraction frequency during orgasm!!!!  Or is that Fun Fun Fun? One of those that has the bass drum steady beat at the beginning although now I cant seem to find it!  Yikes!

Edited September 5, 2016 by NiceDocter