Chilling down the brain and spinal cord is just one area doctors hope to use the slush. Organ transplantation, laproscopic kidney surgery and heart attacks are all areas where the life-saving saline slurry could be used, say the doctors. Once the ice slurry melts the saline is absorbed into the body harmlessly. If it is injected into the lungs, most of the saline is sucked back out, while the remaining solution is then absorbed into the body. This is all good news, says James Black, a surgeon at the Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the research. "If the research shows that it the body cools faster, that's a great advantage," said Black. Ultimately the Argonne and University of Chicago scientists want to use the icy slurry outside the hospital, by equipping ambulances and paramedics with bottles of ice slurry to treat patients. It's an idea that Black is hesitant about. Without general anesthesia, protective cooling could actually worsen acidosis, he said, which is one of the conditions protective cooling is supposed to help. Without anesthesia, as the body cools it shivers to generate heat. Shivering uses a lot of energy, and the products, including lactic acid, acidifies the body, creating another set of problems doctors must deal with. Administering anesthetic is necessary during protective cooling to ensure that the body doesn't shiver. The doctors are also experimenting with mixing synthetic blood substitutes and micro injections of oxygen into the slurry, which would also help patients by providing oxygen and nutrients to the body during a traumatic event, potentially staving off acidosis, among other problems. This would be particularly useful during heart attacks outside a hospital, where as few as five percent of patients survive. The Chicago team hopes to begin FDA trials of the basic ice slurry within the year. They are also speaking with an unmentioned biomedical company to market the slurry producing process. If everything goes well, their life-saving slush could be cooling patients in a few years. "We want to be able to get this stuff into the small capillaries deep in the body, heart and brain, to protect cells from dying from a lack of oxygen," said Kasza.
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