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There have been many cases of people going without oxygen for long periods of time but not suffering brain damage due to the fact that they were in icy water wh

There have been many cases of people going without oxygen for long periods of time but not suffering brain damage due to the fact that they were in icy water which served to cool their brain. So much so that I believe deliberately cooling the brain has been done in an attempt to reduce brain damage. I think the key difference here is the addition of cold saline solution to the blood stream.

blotter_paper 7y ago
From TFA: > One complication of the procedure is that patients’ cells can become damaged as they are warmed up after surgery. Just like holding temperatures in food industry health codes: really cold is okay, and really hot is okay, but you really want to minimise the time spent between extremes. Makes me wonder how fast the brain is deteriorating at 10C, and if there are significantly more problems holding a body for 10 hours as opposed to 10 minutes. For all I know, most of the damage done by this procedure could be in the cooldown and warmup processes (though I'm not making a positive claim).
JauntTrooper 7y ago
When I was driving an ambulance in college, they used to say "They're not dead until they're warm and dead." i.e. do CPR until their body temperature rises to normal.