A 17-year-old male is now in coma after suffering a heart attack when a friend jokingly squeezed his testicles. Dr. Irwin Goldstein—urologist and San Diego Sexual Medicine’s director—says it’s very possible to have a heart attack because the trauma can release a huge amount of adrenalin.
The question of how long someone’s heart would have to be stopped for before you can safely say that regardless of what you do, you’re not going to be able to revive them is avery tricky question. It’s not as simple as saying after 10 or even 20 minutes there’s no hope. For instance, there are countless people who have been subject to hypothermia, have their heart stopped for over 45 minutes, and still have been successfully revived. So many, in fact, that the current guideline set by the American Heart Association (AHA) is that you continue trying to revive the person until their core body temperature is above 95 degrees Fahrenheit- 95 degrees, because below that is the technical definition of hypothermia. The mantra in that situation is, "They’re not dead until they’re warm and dead."
     |
Spray-on solutions have found a place in green technology and even in transmitting radio waves, and they’re no strangers to medical research, either. Researchers at the British Heart Foundation are working on a bioelectric spray composed of heart cells to help mend that most vital of organs. Because the cells need to be extremely thin to form a sheet of heart tissue, they are passed through a conductive needle that charges them with up to 30,000 volts. Exposing the cells to an electric field turns the solution into small droplets, which in turn form the cardiac sheet. The scientists can also add other types of cells to create “three-dimensional” tissue, which can be grafted onto injured hearts or sprayed onto scar tissue to help patients’ tickers pump more strongly. As is so often the case, the next step will be testing the technology on animals, and the project’s ultimate goal is to use this spray-on solution rather than making patients wait for donor hearts.
Filed under: Science
Researchers develop cell spray to repair hearts, healthy dose of electricity included originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 22:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 
BBC | 
British Heart Association | Email this | Comments
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
