Reading the tragic events in Oregon reminded me of a book written about a blizzard in the Midwest in the 1880's. It was known as the children's blizzard due to the high number of children who were caught at school during the blizzard and died trying to make it home. It was a real fast-moving monster.

The author described, on many occasions, people who were almost frozen to death, warmed up by a fireplace, given warm drinks, then, after a time, felt pretty good. They would stand up, walk around for a minute or two, then literally drop dead right in front of their rescuers. It had something to do with their circulatory system not yet being over the shock or something like that. The take home message that I learned was not to let them stand up, let the doctors at the hospital do that.

Anyone with medical training care to elaborate? What are the proper procedures for re-warming a severely hypothermic person?

Hypothermia = Thicker blood, Slower moving, but increased heart rate... thaw = thinner blood but heart rate stays up = heart attack?
(This is 100% a guess!!!)

I know if you thaw frostbite to fast the skin/cells can die.

Cardiac arrythmias are common with hypothermia. The stress of standing up can cause orthostatic hypotension, which in English is a drop in blood pressure caused by standing up (this doesn't require hypothermia). A sudden drop in blood pressure combined with an electrically compromised heart doesn't sound like a good thing. I'm not knowledgable enough to take us from long Q-T intervals plus sudden hypotension to V-Fib, but the latter would kill you pretty well.

Take a look at this web site:

Hypothermia Treatment

Pete

Sodak, I believe what you're describing is explained towards the very end of the webpage that Pete linked to--the sudden introduction of still-cold/cool blood from the extremities into the core circulation. The heart is still not really recovered and the sudden shock of more cold blood causes cardiac arrest or other cardiac abnormality. Very insidious.

It's similar to the danger faced by people pinned under heavy objects, like in an earthquake, through "crush syndrome". They victim will seem fine when they are initially rescued, can walk around and hug people, then shortly thereafter, just drop dead. It's a different mechanism, but it's equally terrible because the victim seems fine at first.

Wow, that goes a little beyond the old "get naked in a sleeping bag with the victim" EMT training I got in the late 70's...

Thanks for the link and the explanations! I'm tucking this one away in the bookmark file.

Hmm, this makes me think that an effective field expedient augmentation would be to have a warm person respirate into a hypothermic individual just like artificial respiration techniques, only with a conscious victim. It may not be ideally warm, but exhaled breath is quite a bit warmer than ambient, full of moisture, and not overly lean on oxygen. Makes sense to me. What do you think Pete?

http://wildernessmedicinenewsletter.wordpress.com/tag/hypothermia/

Do not recall where I picked this up, but I recall someone once stating that you warm the indiviidual in the same way they became hypothermic, i.e. hypothermia due to extended exposure, warm cautiously, and incrementally. Hypothermic due to rapid heat loss, a dunking for example, allows for rapid re-heating. Any of our experts know if this is correct?