CNN: Sanjay Gupta's "Cheating Death"

On Saturday, Oct. 17, CNN aired D. Sanjay Gupta’s one hour report “Cheating Death”, with blog URL here.

The show started with a 22 year old man with an unexplained cardiac arrest. His life was saved first by rapidly repeated chest thumps, not by conventional CPR as used to be taught in first aid courses by the Red Cross, even in the past by the US Army in Basic Training. A good example of conventional CPR is shown by actor Tom Welling playing Clark on Lex in the opening 2001 pilot of Smallville. Then, the young man was transferred to a university hospital in Philadelphia, where he was cooled. Then he was gradually warmed, without any brain damage.

In another case, a young female physician in Tromso Norway had a cardiac arrest from hypothermia. Another case involved a female bus driver with a sudden heart attack.

Hypothermia is effective if a heart has already stopped because it reduces the brain’s need for oxygen. On the other hand, hypothermia at the wrong time could cause cardiac arrest.

Another technique for extending the “golden hour” of time is inducing artificial hibernation, with drugs based on hydrogen sulfide. Related to this would be the practice of medically induced comas.

Gupta has also described his own case of H1N1 while he was reporting in Afghanistan. Apparently he was quite ill for about three days.