From JEMS:
Rick Parker’s existence is baffling. He credits part of it to a miracle and the other part to state-of-the-art treatment given to him by McDowell County Emergency Services (EMS) paramedics. On the night of Friday, June 12, Parker lost his life. “He was pulseless and breathless,” said EMS Director William Kehler. “Medically, he was dead.” Last Thursday evening, Parker, 56, and his daughter, Tonya, of Weaverville met with some of the folks who brought the heart attack victim back to life that night. It was a reunion of sorts, but the gathering also marked the first anniversary of the local EMS’s implementation of therapeutic hypothermia, a cutting-edge treatment used by only 100 EMS agencies out of 24,000 across the nation, according to EMS magazine. Therapeutic hypothermia. Those are big words for a relatively simple procedure that could greatly increase the quality of life for heart attack patients. In layman’s terms, it involves lowering a person’s body temperature once he’s been resuscitation from cardiac arrest. The idea behind the concept is to preserve brain and neurological function, therefore preserving the patient’s quality of life. When a person becomes lifeless and is not breathing, his body temperature rises, increasing the potential for swelling in the brain and cellular damage through the body. With therapeutic hypothermia, paramedics use cold IV solutions and ice packs to drop the person’s temperature to 93 degrees and maintain it.
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