UNM may run no-consent trials of cooling to help with brain trauma
A study proposed by University of New Mexico Hospital could help prove or disprove a theoretical treatment for Traumatic Brain Injury. To do so means anyone injured in or around Albuquerque could become a test subject. When the paramedics come after injury, they can use you to test this medical theory. It involves putting ice packs under the arms and putting you in a bodysuit for 48 hours that induces mild hypothermia. The method has shown promise in reducing complications in traumatic brain injuries in preliminary studies. Elaine Stack, clinical nurse specialist in the UNM Department of Neurosurgery said patients in the study will be unconscious. Hospital staff will try to find a family member to approve or deny the procedure, but the immediacy of the injury means getting consent first is close to impossible.
Doctors have used cooling to help heart attack patients for the past 25 years, and the idea has been around for about 60 years, said Howard Yonas, chairman of neurological surgery and principal investigator for the study. "The brain has to be supplied with nutrients every second," Yonas said. "Just five minutes of no circulation, and the brain's eating itself and dying. But if you cool the body down, for every degree you drop it slows the need for brain nutrition by 10 percent. If you can protect the normal surviving tissue that way while the blood supply is compromised, it's easier to survive.” An earlier, more general study, used patients from a wide age range to test the theory. Overall, the cooling didn't change patient outcomes much, but in the age range of 16-45 the process seemed to help. "In those younger than 45, the severe disability rate went from 76 percent down to 52 percent," Stack continued. Younger children have more complex physiology, which makes it difficult to use them as test subjects. The method likely doesn't work as well in older people because the body has started to decline.













