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Question for the medical readers: a person dies when brain dies from lack of blood flow, right? So all those injuries, say a car crash where heart will stop soo

by Joakal 7y ago

Question for the medical readers: a person dies when brain dies from lack of blood flow, right? So all those injuries, say a car crash where heart will stop soon. 1) Disconnect the head from body 2) plug it into a machine that supplies blood, etc 3) the body is repaired 4) reattach head to body. Overlooking the obvious trauma, is this possible? While extreme/traumatic, I think it could be more reliable as other factors below neck are taken out if equation to dramatically increase chance to survive. Other methods rely on hoping the body isn't too broken to recover. Ie restarting heart, etc then literally giving up as the brain dies from lack of blood flow. A lite version of above is cutting the veins in neck and attaching a dialysis. Would this lite method work? Source: Hearsay reports of moving lips from beheaded woman was literally inspiration for this idea, not futurama heads. Edit: https://theconversation.com/did-anne-boleyn-really-try-to-speak-after-being-beheaded-106650 https://theconversation.com/did-anne-boleyn-really-try-to-sp...

jazoom 7y ago
It's not just the brain. All the body's organs require perfusion. The heart will also quickly die without perfusion. Other organs will survive a little longer.
bayareanative 7y ago
That's what an ECMO is... a last-ditch effort to perfuse the brain and vital organs to see if the body can recover. It rarely does. Head transplantation is still too "out there."
- nostromo 7y ago
  It bothers me that it's called a head transplant and not a body transplant. If I needed to, I would definitely choose a new body over a new head.
- manjana 7y ago
  One problem with head transplantation that comes to me, is that of resources such as hormones and neurotransmitters produced by the body (i.e. intestines produce neurotransmitters). Thence it is not only a problem of oxygenation of brain tissue.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygenation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxyg... an extracorporeal technique of providing prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to persons whose heart and lungs are unable to provide an adequate amount of gas exchange or perfusion to sustain life. The technology for ECMO is largely derived from cardiopulmonary bypass, which provides shorter-term support with arrested native circulation.
X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago
step 4 is pretty hard.
- idlewords 7y ago
  Just do step 1 in reverse.
3JPLW 7y ago
We still cannot repair a spinal cord injury. A complete decapitation is a total spinal cord transection and more.
- echelon 7y ago
  Head transplants have been carried out on mammals successfully in the past. The success criteria isn't in restoring limb function, but rather in keeping the brain alive on a host body. One problem at a time.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    source? I read on this subject about monkey experiments and it seems the results were far from 'successful'.
- mat4magic 7y ago
  An Injury is not a clean cut. So when you use a scalpel to sever it its much easier
gus_massa 7y ago
Better than cutting the head (or the body) is to reduce the temperature and induce an hypothermal effect like in the article. It is used in some surgeries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_hypothermic_circulatory_arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_hypothermic_circulatory_a... (Don't try this at home.)

by Joakal 7y ago

jazoom 7y ago

It's not just the brain. All the body's organs require perfusion. The heart will also quickly die without perfusion. Other organs will survive a little longer.

bayareanative 7y ago

That's what an ECMO is... a last-ditch effort to perfuse the brain and vital organs to see if the body can recover. It rarely does. Head transplantation is still too "out there."

nostromo 7y ago
It bothers me that it's called a head transplant and not a body transplant. If I needed to, I would definitely choose a new body over a new head.
manjana 7y ago
One problem with head transplantation that comes to me, is that of resources such as hormones and neurotransmitters produced by the body (i.e. intestines produce neurotransmitters). Thence it is not only a problem of oxygenation of brain tissue.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygenation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxyg... an extracorporeal technique of providing prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to persons whose heart and lungs are unable to provide an adequate amount of gas exchange or perfusion to sustain life. The technology for ECMO is largely derived from cardiopulmonary bypass, which provides shorter-term support with arrested native circulation.

X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago

step 4 is pretty hard.

idlewords 7y ago
Just do step 1 in reverse.

3JPLW 7y ago

We still cannot repair a spinal cord injury. A complete decapitation is a total spinal cord transection and more.

echelon 7y ago
Head transplants have been carried out on mammals successfully in the past. The success criteria isn't in restoring limb function, but rather in keeping the brain alive on a host body. One problem at a time.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  source? I read on this subject about monkey experiments and it seems the results were far from 'successful'.
mat4magic 7y ago
An Injury is not a clean cut. So when you use a scalpel to sever it its much easier

gus_massa 7y ago

Better than cutting the head (or the body) is to reduce the temperature and induce an hypothermal effect like in the article. It is used in some surgeries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_hypothermic_circulatory_arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_hypothermic_circulatory_a... (Don't try this at home.)