Very interesting read. In med school, we've mentioned briefly hypothermia in arrests. And I always wondered why we can't bypass a recent arrest patient (I guess that it takes time, and probably tough to do if you're doing compressions!).

This article addresses the heart though. Reperfusion injury is something the patient can get from any sort of lack of oxygen: a non-fatal heart attack, stroke, crush injury, etc. In all these cases, though, there's no good treatment. It sounds like this is a step in the right direction. We still have the problem, though, of how the neurons in the brain will react to being reperfused (this is a big issue, like Terry Shiavo). Do we really want to go down this road, only to have a huge increase in "saves" that end up as vegetables?

One thing the article said that I found a bit dumb: the doc said that they didn't see any changes in the cell after an hour of oxygen deprivation. According to my pathology text, changes visible by light microscopy take a few hours to show; electron microscopes are within an hour or 2. I'd be interested to know what he meant.