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Italian boy survives being trapped underwater for 42 minutes
21–30 of 81 posts
Re: Italian boy survives being trapped underwater for 42 minutes
#22Unbelievable. Typically an oxygen starved brain can be permanently destroyed in minutes, like alone more than half an hour. Just shows that what we think are limits to human capacity are more just experienced we've had until now. Very inspiring.
Brain death actually occurs at the time of resuscitation. As it wakes individual cells kill themselves as a result of a kind of "self check." If you cool the brain before resuscitation you can hopefully delay the self check to the point where the cells are correctly oxygenated and healthy when it happens.
Dying somewhere cold cools your brain, giving you a better chance when you are resuscitated.
Re: Italian boy survives being trapped underwater for 42 minutes
#23I wonder why they even tried CPR or a defibrillator. They spent 42 minutes rescuing someone who was underwater, and then decided to try and revive him? Maybe there are details left out, like he was not fully submerged the entire time...
Context: I spent my civil service (+2 more years as a volunteer) serving as a paramedic for the italian national healthcare in Milan.
Paramedics/EMTs can't declare anyone deceased (they are not doctors) and on ambulances there are no doctors. This means that, as paramedics are first to arrive on the scene, they HAVE to perform CPR and defibrillation over anyone until a doctor declares death (only exception is with conditions that are "incompatible to life", example: decapitation). Two more details: no doctor would declare a boy dead on the place - they would AT LEAST require the ambulance to bring the person to the closest hospital, which implies that CPR and Defibrillation is performed for several minutes anyway (usually, ~10-30mins to reach the closest hospital). Last detail, doctors are anyway required by law to ensure that at least 45 mins of CPR has been performed before being able to declare anyone formally dead.
All this procedure may seem overkill but I can assure you that I personally experienced at least two cases where I thought the person didn't stand a chance but then actually fully recovered.
So, the whole story makes perfectly sense :)
Re: Italian boy survives being trapped underwater for 42 minutes
#24Unbelievable. Typically an oxygen starved brain can be permanently destroyed in minutes, like alone more than half an hour. Just shows that what we think are limits to human capacity are more just experienced we've had until now. Very inspiring.
Brain death actually occurs at the time of resuscitation. As it wakes individual cells kill themselves as a result of a kind of "self check." If you cool the brain before resuscitation you can hopefully delay the self check to the point where the cells are correctly oxygenated and healthy when it happens. Dying somewhere cold cools your brain, giving you a better chance when you are resuscitated.
That's fascinating, could you point me somewhere I can read more? I'd always assumed something in the cells was decaying without oxygen preventing them from functioning again. Is it some sort of reaction byproduct that normally is part of a chain but the lack of oxygen breaks the chain and makes some other reaction occur?
Re: Italian boy survives being trapped underwater for 42 minutes
#25Re: Italian boy survives being trapped underwater for 42 minutes
#26Some interesting drowning facts: - Clean and cold water is ideal: pneumonia and metabolism. - If you revive a drowned person, insist they go to the hospital: CPR can push the fluid in their lungs into their blood, only to return later on, drowning them all the same, "parking lot drowning." - Quite often, water doesn't enter their lungs as their vocal cords spasm. ~ Paramedic in another life
You mean clean, cold water is ideal for avoiding the bacterial infection (e.g. streptococcus pneumoniae) that causes pneumonia?
Re: Italian boy survives being trapped underwater for 42 minutes
#27I wonder why they even tried CPR or a defibrillator. They spent 42 minutes rescuing someone who was underwater, and then decided to try and revive him? Maybe there are details left out, like he was not fully submerged the entire time...
It said they took 15 days reviving him.
Re: Italian boy survives being trapped underwater for 42 minutes
#28At one point the article claims he fell into the canal, then a couple sentences later says he jumped in willingly. Which is it?
"An Italian boy who fell into a canal…"
"The 14-year-old, who is said to have jumped off a bridge in Cuggiono…"
It sounds very much like 'journalist-speak'. When they start with "He fell into a canal", they're establishing the boy's innocence - i.e. he wasn't trying to kill himself, wasn't up to anything dodgy, etc. They're also establishing plausible deniability in the event of a libel suit. When they add 'who is said to have jumped off a bridge", they're probably adding conjecture from bystanders, but holding back from saying this as fact, perhaps because of the risk of a libel lawsuit (maybe it's a criminal act due to a byelaw forbidding jumping from that bridge), perhaps because they haven't had enough confirmation to say confidently that he chose to jump - they just know he ended up in the water. So they end up beginning with "He fell into the canal", followed by the reports they've had from one or more witnesses "He is said to have jumped".
Re: Italian boy survives being trapped underwater for 42 minutes
#29Some interesting drowning facts: - Clean and cold water is ideal: pneumonia and metabolism. - If you revive a drowned person, insist they go to the hospital: CPR can push the fluid in their lungs into their blood, only to return later on, drowning them all the same, "parking lot drowning." - Quite often, water doesn't enter their lungs as their vocal cords spasm. ~ Paramedic in another life
You mean clean, cold water is ideal for avoiding the bacterial infection (e.g. streptococcus pneumoniae) that causes pneumonia?
I think it's that the same mechanisms that heal pneumonia heal lungs full of clean, cold water.
Re: Italian boy survives being trapped underwater for 42 minutes
#30I wonder why they even tried CPR or a defibrillator. They spent 42 minutes rescuing someone who was underwater, and then decided to try and revive him? Maybe there are details left out, like he was not fully submerged the entire time...
It's a kid... you try. Worked a 3 year old a couple weeks ago with an unknown downtime in a pool (up to 15 minutes). He was dead from the outset (initial rhythm was asystole), and he stayed dead (much warmer water in this case), but you still try... This is especially true for cold-water drownings. Downtimes even longer than 42 minutes with full recoveries are not unheard of. You're not dead until you're warm and dea…
I'd hope you'd try for an adult too.
But anyway, thank you for your life-saving service.