41–50 of 310 posts
> was in the 5 degree Celsius water for up to 15 minutes before being discovered. as my professor used to say: If you're going to drown, drown in almost-freezing freshwater.
> was in the 5 degree Celsius water for up to 15 minutes before being discovered. as my professor used to say: If you're going to drown, drown in almost-freezing freshwater.
> was in the 5 degree Celsius water for up to 15 minutes before being discovered. as my professor used to say: If you're going to drown, drown in almost-freezing freshwater.
There's a tiny bit of jealousy that I didn't have a similar treatment as a kid, but I also have to count my blessings that I was born in a time where a UCLA professor could consult from a thousand miles away and that a concoction of steroids were enough to make the brain swelling dissipate, leaving me with damage small enough that neuroplasticity could do its wonderful magic.
No, not really. You're making a hyperbolic statement. I've been watching Star Trek for 40 years. We're definitely still in the Dark Ages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMaGnpVaSGQ
Just to be pedantic, isn't referring to where we're at now as "the dark ages" equally hyperoblic?
This is amazing. Does anyone think the cold temperature of the water (5C) had anything to do with the feasibility of recovery? I don't necessarily have a reason to think it would be beneficial or not, just a thought that crossed my mind. I don't think it was mentioned in the article.
Well, this event happens enough that it might be worth studying the benefit of oxygen therapy, but I'd be very careful about the conclusions you draw from this. Maybe the oxygen had a substantial positive effect, or maybe the child would've recovered on her own. We really don't know, since there are other reports of children who have good neurological outcome despite terrible prognosis [1] [2]. I'm suspicious because…
Whoa there, slow down.
Kids are quick. One moment, your three kids are happily watching Finding Dory on the tv, while you're making dinner. The next, only two are: the third has quietly wandered off.
Unless you know the particulars, be very careful about tossing around words like 'neglect'.
In fact drowning does not require filling the lungs completely. Even a volume of a few milliliters/Kilogram of body weight is enough to cause drowning. Additionally, drowning can cause serious damage to the lungs themselves even if the patient survives initial attempts at resuscitation. The alveoli (functional unit of the lungs) are lined with a surfactant that is critical to the exchange of air to the blood stream. Water can severely disrupt the surfactant and impair function not just while the water is present but until the body is able to restore the surfactant layer. Damage to the patient's lungs in this case seems to have been mild enough that the oxygen therapy could do it's job.
Also notable is the 5 degree celsius water temperature (41 degrees Fahrenheit). This water temperature compared with the temperature of an olympic practice pool (~76 degrees Farenheit) is cool enough (though not as cold as many other reports) to trigger the so called "diving reflex" where stimulation of thermo-receptors in the skin triggers a vagal response that shunts blood away from the periphery and to vital organs.
Minimal surfactant damage and the diving reflex (as well as the patient's age) seem likely to some degree to have facilitated successful treatment of the patient.
> An MRI scan a month after the 40th HBOT session showed almost complete reversal of the brain damage initially recorded. Researchers believe the oxygen therapy, coupled with Eden having the developing brain of a child, had activated genes that promote cell survival and reduce inflammation—allowing the brain to recover.
We can reverse brain damage. Wow.
>Concluding, the researchers say that to their knowledge, this is the first reported case of gray matter loss and white matter atrophy (types of brain damage) reversal with any therapy and that treatment with oxygen should be considered in similar cases. “Such low-risk medical treatment may have a profound effect on recovery of function in similar patients who are neurologically devastated by drowning." I always beli…
Not to dampen your enthusiasm too much, but please note that infants are exceptionally good at producing new neurons compared to adults; their brain aren't fully developed after all.
Even if adults could regenerate large numbers of neurons like we do skin cells, those new neurons would have no idea how the old ones were connected.