Doctors Looking For Way To Prolong Lives Of Gunshot Victims

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — Researchers at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center want to try a new procedure that could prolong the lives of gunshot or stabbing victims arriving at emergency rooms in cardiac arrest.

When a victim is in cardiac arrest, doctors have mere minutes to open the patient’s chest and wrap their hands around the heart to get it pumping again. About 95 percent die in those scenarios, The Baltimore Sun reports.

To buy a few more moments for the patients, researchers want to start a study where they can drop the body temperature of a victim to 50 degrees, preserve the heart, brain and other organs while fixing injuries, and then warm and revive the patient before the organs shut down, the newspaper reports.

“The biggest thing in this situation is, once the heart stops no oxygen or blood flows to vital organs,” said Dr. Samuel Tisherman, a principal investigator of the study and professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “Every second, every minute counts in terms of vital organs now suffering because there is no oxygen.”

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